


The Worth of Your Name

by ReaperRain



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, I'm not kidding about that, M/M, Slow Burn, So much angst, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-05-29 18:55:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6389161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperRain/pseuds/ReaperRain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fallout K!Meme prompt: SoSu/Any Male, Soulmate AU. Whether that’s name or “first thing said” type, I don’t care. It could be that the spouse’s name/words were scarred over when the SS woke up and they received a new name/words, or that the spouse was never their soulmate to begin with and so they’ve always had their new LI’s name/words.</p><p>Nora had his name written on her wrist. He didn't have hers. As it turned out fate didn't just predict your soulmate, but that you'd find them 200 years and one apocalypse later, in the enigmatic Brotherhood of Steel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One (Nate)

They were childhood sweethearts right through to adulthood. Joined at the hip, practically finishing each other's sentences. They were Named partners, had to be, everyone said it.

He came home one day to find a big surprise party in his living room. Before he could ask whose birthday it was, Nora had run up to him excitedly, waving her arm so much he had to grab her so he could look at it. His name, scrawled in his handwriting across her wrist. He stared at it in abject fascination while she babbled _I knew it would be you, didn't I tell you it would be you? Let me see yours let me see let me see-_

She'd grabbed his shirt cuff before he could say anything, pushed it up. And his wrist was blank.

Later, his mother stroked his hair and told him boys tended to get their Names later than girls, and not to worry about it. The Name cake was left untouched.

Later still, she took him to a doctor to ask if there was anything that could prevent a Name from showing up. He stared fiercely at his unbranded wrist as though he could will the words to appear.

Eventually, he enlisted in the army just to get away from the concern and suspicion of his family, and the ever-present sadness in Nora's eyes.

-

When he saw her a few years later, she slapped him good and hard across the cheek. It didn't hurt all that much, but the words felt worse than a bullet wound. _What do you think being away did to me, huh? You don't have my Name but I have yours god damn it, and you just left me._

When she'd shouted herself hoarse, he carefully showed her his wrist. Still blank. He was well past the age that Names appear. _I'm not destined for anyone else_ , he said. It was nearly 'not destined for anyone', but he caught himself in time. _So if you'll have me, I'm yours. I promise._

-

There was just a slight warp to his skin, like the faintest of scars. It was how wrists looked when the Name was starting to emerge and he hoped desperately that maybe it really was just very very late coming. But the bloom of black ink never showed up.

Still though, he could sort of see something, sometimes, in the right light. He couldn't really make it out, but it looked sort of like an _N_. Or maybe an _M_ – no, definitely N. No-one else had even come close to her. Besides, she had his Name.

He traced it over and over mouthing _Nora, Nora, Nora._

-

He kept his wrist covered up. Nora assured him multiple times that she didn't care, that she loved him anyway, but he saw the way her eyes drifted to the unmarked skin when it was on show. They didn't really talk about it. What was the point?

He had an early retirement and a whole box full of medals – albeit not quite deserved, his reasons for enlisting not nearly as noble as the shiny tokens declared. A clever, funny wife, a healthy baby boy, a beautiful home and a robot butler. Names were not a pre-requisite to happiness. He didn't need one. He didn't.

-

In retrospect, that day in 2077 was the only day he could remember where the word Name hadn't crossed his mind once. It only took a nuclear bomb to get him to stop fixating on it.

-

By the time he climbed out of the half-defrosted vault, the blue suit was soaked through and freezing. He went to Sanctuary, to the shell of his old home, to change. Like it somehow fucking mattered that he be here and not in any of the other houses, or just out in the open. There wasn't anyone around to see him undress, unless you counted Codsworth.

He unbuckled the pip-boy to peel the last of the wet material off.

There was a Name on his wrist.

Caught in his peripheral, he thought it was some sort of insect at first, though all the insects seemed to have grown huge and monstrous while he wasn't looking. An imprint from the vault suit? Something wrong with his eyes? But though he stared and then cautiously touched and tried to rub it off, the letters stayed. The writing was neat, almost printed in bold, black ink.

**M7-97.**

-

He decided to keep the pip-boy, clunky and antiquated though it might be. It seemed useful and besides, it covered his Name. Any glance he gave it turned into a stare, turned into a good long brooding session about why he couldn't have just had a _Nora._ Hell, at this point he would have settled for any damn Name, so long as it was an actual name and not... whatever the fuck _M7-97_ was. It sounded more like a car model.

Jun and Marcy Long had each other's Names, scrawled across their respective wrists. That put to rest his theory that people just didn't have Names anymore, that the apocalypse had somehow wiped that out too. As far as he could tell, the only thing that changed was how casual everyone was about it, walking around with their wrists bared for all to see. Pre-War it had been considered a private thing, though maybe it was just him projecting his prudish insecurity onto the world around him. 

Maybe people left theirs exposed in the hopes of the right person seeing it in passing. It couldn't be easy finding your match in the wasteland, where before there'd been whole agencies and programmes dedicated to making sure you found The One just that little bit earlier than fate intended. Now you'd be lucky if you found The One at all.

Jun and Marcy didn't seem lucky, he couldn't help but think. Barely interacted with each other, both drowning in their own grief. Not lucky, or happy.

-

On the way down to Diamond City his pip-boy started picking up a strange transmission, somewhat military in nature, requesting help at a nearby location. Curiosity caused him to drift closer, and the worrisome sound of gunfire closer still. Before he knew it he was in the thick of the fight, spending possibly-precious bullets on people he didn't even know. They might've been hostile for all he knew, but they were a step above the gruesome half-rotted ferals, at least.

An odd shudder ran through him when he locked eyes with the apparent leader; it was hard to discern why exactly, but he put it down to the intimidating silhouette of the power armour and piercing stare he was levelled with. He received curt questions, and curter responses at his attempts to dodge them.

“I'm from Sanctuary. It's a settlement on the other side of Concord,” half-truths would do. Somehow, explaining he was from a vault and then explaining that oh yeah, he was about 200 years old too seemed like a bad idea.

“We're aware of the location. There's little there for us to collect,” the man responded. _Collect._ Nate's teeth itched.

They didn't seem... bad, though, just brisk – something Nate was well used to from his military days. If nothing else, it was better to do them a favour and be on their good side than the opposite, and so he tentatively agreed to help.

-

It took five seconds of conversation with Scribe Haylen to determine she was as gentle-natured as they came. It took about the same length of time to determine that Knight Rhys could go fuck himself, but Nate had come across the chest-beating type before, and rising to the occasion didn't usually help matters.

As they prepared to set out, Paladin Danse twirled his helmet before putting it on – a moment of humanity for what was otherwise a walking fortress.

-

Well, he wasn't getting any sleep tonight. Not that he ever did, really, but the image of dead synths littering the floor – their blank expressions no different to when they'd been walking, talking and trying to kill him – was going to stick around for a while. Military training hand kept his hands steady while firing, but now his gun was holstered he could feel his fingers trembling.

He stuffed them in his pockets, hoping the Paladin hadn't already noticed. Occasionally he saw the man glance his way; there was no way to tell what lay beneath the helmet, but it felt like he was being scrutinised. He hoped he impressed, or at least didn't totally disappoint. Stupid really, he had nothing to prove, but no soldier wanted to look weak in front of his peers.

Clearly he'd done something right, as he was given a rather nice weapon as compensation... and a recruitment offer. _Advanced weaponry. The Brotherhood at your back._ Everything he needed to find Shaun. But he was getting the impression they were a bit heavy-handed and, well, military. Military was familiar territory, but crossing it again wasn't necessarily a good thing. He wasn't sure he was sold on the Brotherhood. Danse though, could honestly have taken Arcjet by himself with a hand tied behind his back. He was focused, efficient, careful. And...

 _Intense_ was the word, maybe. Even masked, he felt as though the gaze had him pinned in place, opening some cavity he didn't know existed to examine and determine his worth. There was another shudder, though it didn't present as anything more than a twitch of his shoulder.

“Yes,” he swallowed. “I'll join.”

He wondered if Danse was smiling behind the helmet. If he ever smiled. What it looked like when he did. “That's what I like to hear.”

-

Nick Valentine, detective with an apparent side career as prisoner, was a synth. He had the same face as the monstrosities in Arcjet – torn and weathered, expressions creased into the unyielding skin, but it was unmistakeable. Nate had a hard time meeting those bright yellow eyes. Nick noticed for sure, but reacted with quiet resignation rather than offence.

Later, they sat in his office discussing Nate's life story, the first time he'd shared it in full with anyone. There was a lopsided picture of a stag on the wall, a no smoking sign and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. It was... humanising. Like Danse twirling his helmet.

Chasing down Kellogg, they came across more eerie synths, who it turned out were a lot harder to fight without a guy in power armour at your side, but Nick held his own. He wondered what it was like, gunning down people who shared your face.

Afterwards, Nick said _Hey, chin up. I know the night just got darker, but it won't last forever._

He had no nightmares of synths that night. Hard to find something frightening when you'd seen one in a fedora.

-

The Brotherhood weren't exactly the good guys, he realised. Not if Nick's reaction to the arrival of the Prydwen was anything to go by, plus the anxious muttering of Diamond City's denizens. _They're here to start a war._ He'd had more than enough war for one lifetime.

But Haylen had been kind. Danse, filled with conviction as he spoke of them. They couldn't all be bad – if he was going to give synths the benefit of the doubt he had to do the same for the Brotherhood, didn't he?

The Prydwen was those reinforcements Danse had mentioned – meaning he could return and be formally inducted into the Brotherhood. Or he could walk away, avoid the police station and find someone else to ally himself with, help him find Shaun. The Minutemen, though admittedly their grand army of him and Preston didn't exactly fill him with confidence.

Danse had so much confidence... the ruler-straight line of his back, the proud tilt of his chin, the determined stride. It seemed almost burned into his brain, the image returning to him for reasons he couldn't discern, except maybe sheer envy. Confident and purposeful, while Nate stumbled through this world he barely recognised, no family, no friends, even his damn Name had thrown a curveball at him. He couldn't be faulted for wanting a share of that surety, for a change.

He sighed, and headed for Cambridge.

-

“Now the Prydwen has arrived we should board as soon as possible,” Danse was telling him. He looked, if possible, even prouder than he had before, bolstered now he had comrades by his side. “If you're ready I'll signal a vertibird, but while we wait I could do with taking down a few details. I don't even know your name yet.”

He didn't, Nate realised. People in this new world didn't seem to care for what you were called as much as whether you were armed and dangerous. But in retrospect, he didn't remember directly telling many people his name Before either – they all learned it from his military records, from gossip, from other people making the introductions for him. There was a loneliness to the post-apocalypse, but he had to wonder if he hadn't just carried that with him into the vault, then back out of it.

Brooding. Danse wanted an answer. “Yes sir, ask away.”

The paladin crowded over to his terminal, stooping low to reach the keyboard. Nate was briefly befuddled as to how the hell Danse was typing in power armour, until he noticed he'd stripped the gauntlets off so his hands could poke out of the frame. Actually getting _out_ of the armour though, that was apparently a no go. “First things first. Your name?”

“Nathaniel – though Nate in person, please.” 

Danse's gaze shifted away from the terminal to something to his left; he'd seen a wandering spider, maybe. His voice was even. “Surname?”

“Levine.” And back to the screen. He almost asked what Danse's forename was but caught himself – trying it on a sergeant back in the day would've earned him a stern reprimand, and this was no different.

“Age?”

 _246._ “34.”

“And you were from...Sanctuary, was it?”

He wanted to be honest. Danse's militancy stirred some instinctual reaction beaten into him back in his army days, the obedience that compelled him to keep no secrets from his CO. Or perhaps because Danse seemed so upstanding, so lawful himself that Nate felt the need to match him. 

But that would mean admitting he was from a vault, and while that information on it's own wasn't so bad, he couldn't help but remember Danse's comment on Sanctuary before. _There's little there for us to collect. Collect, collect, collect._ The word bounced and fizzed around inside his head. Sanctuary held no interest to them, but a vault? They'd want a poke around if nothing else. Stare at the frozen corpses. Stare at Nora. Danse he trusted to be respectful, but the rest of them?

“Sanctuary, yes,” he said.

“What was your role there?”

 _Popsicle._ “Just a settler.”

Danse made a sound that wasn't quite agreement, but didn't look up. “You shoot well for a settler.”

“Well, you know. Raider attacks sharpens your aim up soon enough.”

He did look up then, fixing Nate with a look that made him want to spill all of his truths. His shoulder twitched again, and he really really needed to stop with the involuntary reactions before he won the Shiftiest Person of the Year award.

“You know,” Danse spoke just a little slower than normal. “The Brotherhood doesn't discriminate on backgrounds. Including any organisations or factions you may have belonged to previously.”

Shit, he _was_ the Shiftiest Person of the Year. “Noted, but I'm not a merc or anything. Just a wastelander with good aim.”

“I see.” He didn't think Danse believed him in the slightest, but it didn't seem to bar his progress into the Brotherhood. Judging by what Scribe Haylen had told him, they'd already lost most of their squad – the need to replenish their numbers made them less fussy about recruitment, maybe. In any case, by the time Danse had typed up the report the vertibird had arrived, and the two of them climbed aboard.

“You're not scared of heights,” Danse commented as they flew.

He shrugged. It was better to be vague and quiet than spin a story he wouldn't be able to remember later. “It's never bothered me. It's kind of nice, seeing the Commonwealth from up here. Everything's so tiny and indistinct, you could almost forget it's a warzone.”

“The Brotherhood will find a way to bring peace,” Danse swore. Nate didn't know if he believed him, but he believed that Danse believed it.


	2. Chapter Two (Danse)

“With respect, sir,” Which was how Knight Rhys usually prefaced anything highly disrespectful, “This settler story is bullshit.”

“Language,” Danse admonished. Going by Rhys' black mood, he'd inquired into Cade's medical evaluation of their newest recruit. He leaned against the nearby railing, glaring with burning intensity at the reports currently stacked on Danse's desk. Haylen hovered worriedly nearby. “I need the two of you to learn to work together. And he's been nothing but polite to you.”

“He's _too_ polite. It's making me suspicious.” At Danse's raised eyebrow, he continued: “He's all... _sir yes sir_ and snapping his heels together. Settlers don't act like that. They also don't make a habit of charging feral mobs. What if he's an Institute infiltrator?”

“It seems unlikely, given he helped the Paladin fight off all those synths in Arcjet,” Haylen pointed out. Rhys gave her a look, but he was never able to scowl at her for long. “He seems nice to me. I mean, he's a terrible liar. But he's nice.”

“He's ex-military is what he is. He falls into line way too easily to be a civilian.” Which was almost a compliment from Rhys, if you squinted. “The only militants in the Commonwealth aside from us are the Gunners, and Gunners are bad news.”

“No forehead tattoo,” Danse murmured. “Besides, he's too clean to be a Gunner.”

“He's too clean to be a settler.”

It was a fair point.

“I already asked him if he was a mercenary and he denied it-” and just as Rhys started with _well he would, wouldn't he_ Danse held a hand up and continued: “I'm sure he's aware that mercenary is far more plausible than a settler who knows how to shoot, can follow orders and doesn't balk at synths. That he denied it leads me to think he really _isn't_ one. What he is remains to be seen, but I'll get the truth out of him eventually.”

“So we're supposed to trust him with our lives? After he bare-faced lied to you?”

“ _I_ will be trusting him with _my_ life, neither you nor Haylen are in danger. The Elder's orders are to shadow him as and when requested, once Fort Strong has been dealt with. If he planned to turn against me, he had ample opportunity to do so in Arcjet. Why would he try now?”

With Danse unbudging on the issue, Rhys eventually slunk off, muttering about armour repairs. Haylen approached the desk cautiously.

“For what it's worth, sir, I believe he'll be an asset to us,” she said. “He has some, um, trust issues, I think. Which is why he's not being honest with us. But I don't believe he's a bad person.”

“Nor do I. I have a...” His eyes drifted briefly over to his left arm, before snapping away again. “A good feeling about him. But it's difficult to justify such things to Knight Rhys.”

“He'll come around.” Haylen also glanced over at Danse's left arm, namely his wrist. “It's, it's Nathaniel, right? Is he... _the_ Nathaniel?”

Danse shook his head. His heart felt unusually heavy for a moment, though he inwardly chastised himself for it. “I thought so, briefly, but the surname is different.”

“Oh...” She looked briefly downcast. Danse wasn't quite sure why she was so invested in his Name, but Haylen was something of a hopeless romantic by nature. She wanted to see happy endings, even if they weren't her own. “Still! The forename was right. That's one step closer!”

“That's not how Names work, Haylen,” he pointed out, but felt the quirk of his lips anyway. It was hard not to smile at her optimism. “Regardless, you don't need to be matched to someone to have belief in them, and I believe Knight Levine will go far in the Brotherhood.”

“I hope so too. Anyway, I, um. Should go see how Rhys is doing before he glares a hole in the hull. Ad victoriam, sir,” she saluted, and left him to his work.

It was when he finally had peace and quiet that he rolled the left sleeve of his flightsuit up, just enough that the writing became visible. The Brotherhood maintained that Names were a private issue, and so he'd never had cause to share it with anyone before Haylen. She'd asked and asked until he relented and showed it to her. Maybe she'd wanted to see if he even had one; he was aware of some junior Brotherhood members joking that the impassable Paladin Danse couldn't possibly be matched to anyone.

He was, though. _Nathaniel Clora_ gleamed across his wrist as though it were freshly inked. In terrible handwriting too, he already planned to tell them off for their penmanship as soon as he met his match. If he met his match. Most lives came and went without success and were no worse off for it, but he always held a certain hope that he would. It was hard to imagine having a match that _wasn't_ in the Brotherhood, so he was guilty of checking the reports every time a new batch of recruits came in. When he'd heard the new Initiate – Knight, rather – introduce himself he'd thought, just for a second, that this was it, but...

Well. No matter. He rolled his sleeve back down again.

-

Fort Strong was theirs, but dealing with supermutants always hit him hard.

Brach, obliterated by a landmine. Worwick, breathing wetly and staring glassily at the ceiling, long dead before Danse ordered Haylen to overdose him. Keane, swarmed by screaming ferals. Dawes, head splitting open like a mutfruit under a laughing supermutant's sledgehammer. Cutler...

He didn't wake up in a panic anymore. Nightmares were such normalcy, he only had mild nausea and resignation. Objectively he knew that was cause for concern, a sign that he needed to remove himself from active duty for a while, but the Brotherhood needed him now more than ever.

He checked the time. 0300 hours. _Tap tap tap_ against the bedframe as he contemplated what to do. He knew from experience that attempting to sleep again would result in failure – back in Cambridge there had been weapons to maintain, stocks to count and further fortifications to be made, but now his hands were idle.

0300\. He could go for a smoke. He tried not to indulge in bad habits in front of his peers, but very few would be about at this hour. _Tap tap tap_. He sat up from the bed, reaching for his jumpsuit. He contemplated the power armour, but the noise and vibration it would make could be considered inconsiderate, at this hour.

Clothed, he grabbed the cigarette pack and lighter, tucking them away and heading for the exterior as quietly as he could. There were a few nocturnal deck scribes around running night maintenance, but they paid him little mind. Honestly, he wasn't sure many people recognised him out of the power armour.

When he reached the forecastle, there was someone with the exact same idea, leaning over the railing. He nearly left but they turned at the sound of the door, illuminated just enough to be recognisable.

“Knight Levine?” he asked.

“Paladin?” the cigarette he'd been holding was discarded into the breeze quick as a wink. He smothered the smile that threatened to emerge.

“Waste of a cigarette. At ease, I came up for the same reason.” He revealed the carefully-stowed pack, joining Levine – joining _Nate_ – at the railing.

“Oh. I didn't take you for a smoker, sir.”

“It negatively impacts your health, and you should be ashamed for partaking,” Danse said, lighting up. “Do you want one?”

“...Please.” He plucked a cigarette from the crumpled pack, fumbling for his own lighter. “I _did_ take you for an early riser, but not this much.”

“I could say the same. Why are you up so early?”

“Up so late actually, I haven't slept yet.” Snapping the lighter shut, he took a few puffs, the smoke immediately lost to the crisp dawn air. “Gave up on trying some thirty minutes ago.”

“Do you often have trouble sleeping?”

Nate gave him the side-eye. “Will you send me back to Knight-Captain Cade if I say yes?”

“He's a very smart man. Smart enough to ask why _I_ knew you were awake at 0300.”

“Ah, so we have equal leverage on each other. Sir,” he added quickly at the end.

They stood in companionable silence for a while, no sound but the Prydwen's engines and the occasional smoky exhale. There were very few people who withstood Danse's reticence for long, quick to fill the hush with awkward smalltalk until one of them was compelled to leave. Nate though, was pleasantly wordless. He would have suspected his presence was forgotten entirely, but when he reached for a second smoke Nate mumbled a _here, let me_ and gestured the cigarette be handed over. He held the ends together, inhaling to ignite the new one, and passed it back.

“Thank you,” Danse said, taking a drag. Then: “So, you're ex-military.”

Nate coughed around his cigarette. Danse waited it out.

“I'm not sure what gives you that idea, sir.” he managed at last, voice as weak as the words.

“Well, that reaction for one. You also possess excellent combat skills, optimal physical fitness and an adherence to regulation most civilians would take months to become accustomed to.” Another puff and he continued, words lined with smoke. “But the main thing is that you threw your cigarette to the wind as soon as you saw me. Reflexes to avoid disciplinary action are the classic mark of a soldier.”

Nate looked at him wide-eyed for a good long while. Danse held the gaze patiently, until Nate finally cast his gaze away, back to the tiny, distant Commonwealth below them.

“I don't see why it matters,” he said at last. “I've done everything you asked. I brought Paladin Brandis back, and helped retake Fort Strong. Is my loyalty still in doubt?”

“Not from me, or you wouldn't be on the Prydwen,” he said evenly. “But for us to work most effectively as a team, trust must be established. I don't mean that I need to know everything about you – but I need to know that you're comfortable confiding in me. That you realise I'm trying to help you, not to test you.”

He stared long and hard at the little toy city below them. Then, so soft it was almost missed in the Prydwen's hum: “Vault. I'm from a vault.”

He'd expected _Gunner, merc, bounty hunter_ or something along those lines. Hell with the way Nate had dragged it out he'd even anticipated _ex-raider_ , however preposterous the scenario. But this? “You're a vault dweller?”

Nate shrugged listlessly. “Was. Institute attacked, killed my wife, took my son. So I left.”

He knew that part. Nate had already relayed the story to Maxson when pressed on his personal interest in breaching the Institute, though at the time he'd used the much more vague _they attacked my home_ , without specifying where _home_ was. Born and raised in a vault, then? No wonder Cade had gushed over his blood test results.

“Which vault?” he asked, but Nate simply shook his head wordlessly. “...I understand. Regardless, thank you for informing me.”

“Yeah,” was the stiff reply. Nate flicked the stub of his cigarette off the side of the ship and jammed his hands in his pockets. He still wouldn't meet Danse's eyes and he thought, for a moment, that maybe he'd pushed too hard. But then- “Well. If you're as bad at this sleep thing as I am, maybe I'll see you up here again.”

“I'd like that.” He watched Nate take his leave, lingered for a while before dragging the last remnants out of his own cigarette, stubbing it out and carefully pocketing it.

Wasn't the whole story. Something important was missing. But it was a start.

-

“Yeah, no. I don't buy it,” was Rhys' input on the matters when Danse later shared his new information. “Vaulties are even _more_ wimpy than civvies. And they're definitely _not_ military.”

“We know by now they were all social experiments, though. Like that one back in DC, where the overseer was in control of everyone,” Haylen piped up, “A vault with a military structure isn't improbable.”

“So what did he do drills against, radroaches? Vaults don't produce soldiers. It doesn't add up.”

“The health does though. You've heard Cade talk about him, right? I think he's in love.”

Danse coughed to hide his reaction to that. “That's enough, you two. Given he only admitted it under duress, I'm inclined to believe him.”

“It doesn't add up,” Rhys repeated firmly.


	3. Chapter Three (Nate)

Nightly, he carefully unbuckled his pip-boy and used the dim light to stare at his wrist. _M7-97_ gleamed back, unchanged. He knew he spent too much time thinking about it, even by pre-war standards when Names had meant so much more than they did now. People were focused on just trying to live another day, never mind finding their soulmate and their happily ever after.

He was also focused on trying to live another day, make sure other people lived another day, find out if Shaun _had_ lived another day. There was so much to think about, but at times it was hard to focus on anything but this little piece of writing on his wrist. He was self-centred, he supposed. Another pre-war trait. Still, if he wanted to become less self-centred, he needed some closure first.

Not that this was exactly detective work, but he figured if he was going to go to anyone, it had to be Nick. He was one of the very few people who knew that Nate was pre-war – he'd quickly deduced that sharing that information with others made them think he was crazy or worse, vulnerable – so he figured he might as well share this too. And maybe, just maybe, he would have seen something like this before.

He'd built it up so much in his head that Nick's nonchalant response was almost a letdown: “Huh. That's a synth designation.”

He blinked stupidly, not sure how to process the information. “It is?” And then: “Wait, is this common? I haven't seen anyone else with letters.”

“It didn't used to be, but it's becoming moreso these days. Which... sort of implies there are way more synths about than they're used to be. Doesn't exactly quell people's fears about Institute replacements.” Nick told him, tapping metal fingers against his desk. His back processor was whirring, which usually meant he was thinking deeply about something. “It's a taboo subject – not many of those left these days – so anyone with a synth Name tends to keep it covered up.”

Tap tap tapping. Eventually, he had to speak: “What is it, Nick?”

Bright yellow eyes glanced up at him abruptly, the processor stuttering. “Sorry, it's just a thought. Did you have this pre-war? Only... y'know. Synths didn't exist back then.”

He hesitated. This was the sort of thing he would never, ever have shared Before, but, well. This wasn't Before. “No. Nora had my Name, but I didn't have hers.”

“Poor woman,” Nick said softly, and the realisation that it wasn't _himself_ he should've felt sorry for all these years hit him like a truck. Christ, he was such an asshole. “But that your Name didn't even appear until now... what, did fate know you were going to be frozen for 200 years? Makes me wonder how much of our lives are choice, and how much pre-determined.”

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Was he always fated to live in this bleak future? Was Nora always fated to die in the vault? “But-” he started, not entirely sure where he was going with this himself, “If I'd just had a normal Name, I – I probably wouldn't have joined the army, honestly. And joining the army is what got me and Nora into the vault, which is what got me here, right now. So I'm only fated for a synth because I was... fated for a synth?” he rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Too much to think about.

He felt Nick reach over to clap him on the shoulder. “It's alright. Existential questions made up my first few years out here too.”

He stayed like that for a while, mind spinning, otherwise unmoving, until something occurred to him. “Wait. I have a synth Name. So somewhere out there, a synth has mine on their wrist too. Which means they're people.”

Nick gave him a not-entirely-happy look. “This was in doubt before? I know you've been palling around with the Brotherhood, but I hope you know better than to listen to their jabber.”

“Yes – no – I mean, it's _proof_. That they're not machines. If they have Names they're bound by the same fate humans have, so they must be human-” another idea occurred whiplash fast, and was out of his mouth before he could stop to think about it, “You have a Name too, right?”

Valentine went quiet.

It felt as though his heart had petrified inside his chest. His voice was small. “You don't...?”

Lips set in a grim line, Nick rolled his sleeve up. Unlike his skeletal metal right hand, the left was mostly undamaged – deliberate care taken, Nate had assumed, to try and keep his Name safe. There had been amputees before the war who mourned the loss of their Name as much as their missing left hand. But even though the skin was mostly intact, there was a great big scratch over the wrist, right where the writing should be. 

The scratches were horizontal, clean. “That looks...”

“Deliberate?” Nick finished quietly. “When I woke up in that trash heap, it was like this. Like someone tried to score it out. I have to wonder if it wasn't at least part of the reason I was tossed. I'm an early model, right? Maybe I was one of the first to show a Name.” He dipped his head a little, deepening the shadow cast by his hat until his face was all but obscured. “Or maybe I never had one, and they scratched it deliberately to make me think I had, see how I reacted. Another experiment. I guess I'll never know, huh.”

“Nick...” fuck, but his voice felt raw against his throat. “It's not... it can't be the latter. You always said that – that the Institute just sees synths as tools, right? Not people, just people replacers. Why run experiments that make them question what they are?”

“To see what happens? That's practically the Institute's motto.” Nick shrugged listlessly. Considering how robotic his form was, Nate never ceased to startle at how expressive Nick's gestures were. “Even if I had a Name, was it unique? Or was it Je- the Name pre-war Nick had? I don't know. Wasted a lot of time in the Memory Den trying to find a flashback where my Name was intact, but... nothing.”

 _I could just be a copy of Nick. Or I could be my own person._ To have so much hinging on a Name, only to have it scratched out. His dislike for the Institute was already going strong, but he felt it tenfold now.

He swallowed, and spoke as carefully as he was able: “I believe that you developed a Name, an individual one, that was far beyond anything the Institute predicted. That they panicked and scrapped you, because they didn't know what else to do. Because you were the first... _human_ synth.”

Nick gave a half-laugh, the sound more sad than anything else. “I'm not sure I can be described as human.”

“You are,” Nate said, firmer this time. “No matter what anyone says, what the Brotherhood says. You are.”

At last, Nick tipped his head back up so the light hit him again, and gave him a rueful smile. It was still sad, but there was some improvement there. “You're a good kid.”

-

_How much of our lives are choice, and how much pre-determined?_

He had a synth Name on his wrist. He thought about the ugly blank space he'd had from adolescence onwards, the revelation that all this time, his Name hadn't formed because the person he was matched to hadn't existed yet – that their very _concept_ hadn't existed yet. He was always meant to wake up here, to _belong_ here in this new world. And Nora was always fated to a miserable death in a frozen tomb.

He squeezed his left wrist so hard the bones creaked under his fingers. It was hard to breathe.

It should've been him. She'd been beautiful and brilliant where he was muted and pathetic. The Minutemen and Brotherhood praised his accomplishments but if Nora had been in his place her actions would have outstripped his, he was sure. She was a lawyer, she could get anyone to do anything she wanted. He was a soldier, he could shoot straight, big deal. This world needed far more diplomats than it did fighters.

She would have made a fantastic General. Preston gave him assignments, he did them because taking orders was easy, but the Minutemen were expanding and he needed to be seen as more than a foot soldier. Despite the fact he was doing a foot soldier's work, his inner grump mentally added. He didn't think Preston knew what the rank General was supposed to entail. But footwork was what he was best suited to, wasn't it? Not leadership. Nora had always taken the lead, not him.

He missed her so, so much. Her eyes and the smell of her hair and the sound of her laugh. Her strength, living as one half of a whole that would never, could never be put together. Her forgiveness that he ran away to the army, that he kept going back for _one more tour, just one more, last one, promise_ and it wasn't once out of duty to his country, it was because he only stopped thinking when someone was trying to kill him. He'd only ever been at peace when he was at war.

Too much. Too many thoughts. His chest hurt and his eyes stung and his breath came in laboured, choking gasps. Dogmeat whimpered and nosed at his fevered skin. He kneaded shaking hands in the mutt's fur, forcing himself to breathe. Enough. _Enough._ He needed to find Shaun so he could claim that once, just once, he'd made a promise to Nora and actually fulfilled it.

It was telling of his character, he thought, that it took her death to get him to keep his word.

-

The radiation-fog of the Glowing Sea was thick around him, threatening to wither him to nothingness if he so much as stepped out of his power armour. Deathclaws and behemoths stalked around every corner, ready to reduce him to scrap. There was no room to focus on anything but putting one foot in front of the other, and he was more tranquil than he'd felt in a while.

He wasn't particularly afraid of dying. Aside from the fact that he was in his element in this sort of environment, he'd brought along the one person who shared the sentiment. Danse came with his own power armour but that wasn't really the point, about half of the company he kept these days was immune to radiation. The main selling point was that Danse was a _soldier._ He wouldn't break down in the middle of this green-tinged hellscape – just months later, maybe, in some dark, silent place where no-one would see the show of weakness.

He knew how Danse worked. More importantly, Danse knew how _he_ worked. He'd acquired a plethora of companions by now and each was dear to him in their own way, but he gelled with Danse in a way he somehow couldn't with everyone else. He was still occasionally fixed with a stare that pierced his soul, or a brisk tone that made his spine snap into a ruler, but Danse had gentled quite a bit since their first meeting. Now his presence was... reassuring, soothing even. It was hard to explain. Most of what he felt around Danse was hard to explain.

They found the shell of an old cabin to hole up in for the night – or day, whatever time it was now, hard to tell. Once certain the light wouldn't attract anything Nate started a campfire, the flames tinged sickly green, and tossed Danse a dose of rad-x so they could both take their helmets off. They shared some cram which, like all military ration-food, tasted absolutely dire.

“Bad food is a staple part of military life,” Danse spoke in response to his grumbling. “It provides excellent common ground to foster camaraderie between soldiers.”

Nate snorted. “In which case I feel exceptionally friendly with you right now, sir.”

That got a laugh out of him, such an uncommon occurrence that his entire skin tingled, like he was hearing some new, alien sound. “I return the sentiment, knight.”

He was quiet then, smile slipping off his face. The atmosphere changed notably, and Nate swallowed. “Paladin Danse?”

He put down the tin of Christ that's Really Awful Meat and turned to look at Nate. It wasn't the soul pierce stare, but it was equal parts grave and earnest, to the extent that he leaned forward. “...You know, when you were first placed under my sponsorship, I had some serious reservations about it...”

The way he went on to speak of Cutler... it seemed almost as though they'd been joined at the hip, completed each other. He knew what he wanted to ask but it took a few tries to get the words out, his bravery sticking in his throat. “Were you... I mean, was he...” he settled for tapping his left wrist, in the end.

Danse gave a soft sound. “No. I always felt we should have been, the way we just ran into each other in Rivet City and... clicked. It felt as though fate was involved.” He paused, as though unsure if his next words were a step too far. “I wondered afterwards if we weren't matched because... his fate was already sealed. But I don't know if Names work that way. If it goes so far as to avoid matches where one person dies long before the other.”

 _It does. It does. Tell him._ He couldn't say it. That would mean bringing up that he was pre-war, he wouldn't be believed. Bringing up Nora, he couldn't face that again, not now. Bringing up that he had a synth's Name on his wrist, he... he didn't know how the Brotherhood would treat that. It certainly wouldn't be with acceptance.

“What about you?” Danse went on to say, snapping Nate from his reverie, “If you don't mind me asking... were you and your wife...?”

His earnest look was about as hard to lie to as his interrogative one. Avoidance would have to do: “She had my Name, yes. Kind of implies that I should have died with her, doesn't it? Or that we won't be long apart.”

“I'd rather you made every effort to avoid that scenario if possible,” Danse answered, and it was such a _Dansism_ that Nate actually laughed aloud. “I am serious, Nate.”

“I know. I know you are. It was just how you put it,” he tittered, schoolgirl-like, behind massive power armour-encased fists. His actual answer soon sobered him up, however. “I miss her, you know? So much. But I didn't go when she did, so it wasn't my time. I don't plan on hastening the date.”

Danse relaxed a little. Nate wondered if the notion had been worrying him. “I'm glad to hear it. I don't want to go through another Cutler again.”

“I wouldn't do that to you.” His Name all but declared that he was never supposed to belong to the old world. He was supposed to live. And even if he never met _M7-97_ – that was, if he even wanted to – he had plenty of other things to keep him marching on. Friendships, understanding, those were a good start. “I care about you too much to let that happen.”

“I... I see.” Danse's eyes widened, face looked darker, but in the eerie green cast it was difficult to tell.

Nate being, he could freely admit, a bit of a dunce sometimes, it didn't occur to him how that sentence could be taken until hours later, when the subject had long since been dropped.

-

There were plenty of places to rest once they left the Glowing Sea. Diamond City. Boston Airport. Any of the more Southern settlements he'd been helping. But it had to be Sanctuary. Had to be.

“Just want to rest somewhere as far away from the Glowing Sea as possible,” he told Danse, “You don't mind the extra walk, right?”

It wasn't a complete lie. But he was fed up of giving half-truths, especially where Danse had been honest and open with him. After talking about Cutler... it felt as though he needed to share something back. No, that he wanted to.

“Where are we going?” Danse questioned as Nate left the power armour back in Sanctuary, and beckoned him to follow out of the settlement.

He fidgeted. “I want to show you something. It's... it's just a little further. Not five minutes.”

The stall in Danse's movements told him he'd cottoned on about the time he saw the vault-tech billboard, burned and torn though it might be. Still, it was only when they reached the elevator marked with _111_ that he spoke. “This is the vault you came from.”

“Yeah.” He shuffled in place. He didn't want to express anti-Brotherhood sentiments since, well, this was Danse, and also Nate was fairly sure they were his best chance at getting into the Institute. If he was going to rely on them he needed to trust them more, didn't he? But... “I would prefer if this place wasn't marked for sweep and retrieve. That it's left. Alone.”

Danse frowned a little, “There's no valuable technology inside?”

“Nothing you couldn't get from another vault, or that wasn't destroyed when the Institute visited. I could... I could take you down. You can assess it for yourself.”

“Lead the way, knight.”

The elevator descended, slow and heavy. Nate glanced up at the vault doors closing above them, remembering the rush of poison fire screaming overhead, last time. His skin felt fevered, despite the growing chill in the air.

“You never explicitly mentioned the fate of the other vault dwellers,” Danse said as they touched the bottom. Nate hadn't explicitly mentioned anything. There was so, so much Danse didn't know, and Nate didn't know where to start. “Am I correct to assume they're deceased?”

“Yes. I was the only survivor.” He stepped out, noting the condensation glistening on the floors and walls. “There's – there's water. Mind your footing.”

The further in they went the colder it was, remnants of ice still clinging to some of the pipes. Originally that temperature had been confined to the cryo rooms but everything was breached now, the frost spreading outwards like a plague. Skeletons of humans dead for a long, long time littering the floor. He knew Danse was putting all the oddities together.

He was wide-eyed when they reached their final stop, the room with a row of broken pods. “This is a cryogenics facility?”

“Yeah,” Nate responded quietly. “I was a... subject? Resident? This is where I slept.”

“And the Institute attack woke you up?”

“Briefly, but they re-froze me after they took Shaun. Going by the skeletons the vault had already been unstaffed for a long time by that point, but the pods were still functional. They're not now,” he hastened to add. “They were all sabotaged, except mine. I don't think the Brotherhood can use them.”

“It's a shame, but I have to agree. I haven't seen anything salvageable yet.” In a kinder tone, he added: “I won't send any teams down here.”

He couldn't quite voice his thanks, throat too tight, so he just nodded and hoped the gratefulness came across.

“This was a cryogenics experiment then? It's unusual, from experience most of vault-tech's research was social, not physical.” Danse went on to say. “I suppose the social aspect may have been how residents reacted when they were required to submit to cryosleep. Was it just part of your expected duties? Was it enforced in any way?”

“It wasn't... ah. We didn't take turns being frozen.” Nate scratched his head. Of course, formerly frozen wouldn't immediately translate to pre war. He'd have to tell Danse, but he was still worried that he wouldn't be believed. He needed proof... he spotted one of the terminals on the wall, still functional, and moved over to it.

Danse frowned, turning as Nate slipped past him and started tapping away. “I don't follow. Were a few selected from each generation for lifelong freezing?”

“Just from one generation.” He managed to pull up a more detailed version of his occupancy records. Stepping away from the terminal, he gestured for Danse to take his place. “Here. This has all my details.”

Danse gave him a look that suggested he'd rather just be told the answer, but Nate shook his head shallowly. It was difficult to speak about Before and besides, he couldn't think of a way to phrase it that didn't sound preposterous. It was easier to hand Danse the facts and just confirm when he put everything together.

Danse took a moment to read. “Knight. This terminal claims you were born in year 2043. And the date of your freezing is 2077.”

“That's correct.”

The man turned and fixed him with one of _those_ looks. It was just as well he wasn't falsifying anything, or he'd have blurted out the hoax right away. As it stood there was nowhere to look but right back into Danse's steely eyes. “That would make you pre-war.”

He felt pinned in place. Couldn't make himself avert his gaze. “That's correct.”

“You were frozen the year the bombs fell?”

“The day the bombs fell. Only just got to the vault in time.” And it came tumbling from his lips, everything he'd felt compelled to inform Danse about Before and only just kept to himself. All the secrets he was sure no-one would ever believe. “We were taken down here and told these were decontamination pods. We didn't know. That we were being frozen.” He exhaled sharply, shakily, as though the chill caught up with him all at once. “Maybe that was the social experiment? They planned to unfreeze us and study our reactions to having slept... however many years they thought it would be. I don't think they planned for 212 though.”

“Knight,” Danse said, then: “Nate. Why didn't you tell me?”

He shook his head. “Would you have believed me? I wouldn't have believed me. Though with the state of the wasteland, maybe you've more capacity for believing outlandish things than I do. I needed to bring you here, so you could see for yourself.”

“I concede your point, but perhaps sooner would have – no, it doesn't matter.” Danse didn't seem quite sure what to do with himself, though the look he gave Nate was nothing less than fascinated. “You're _pre-war_. You understand how important this is? There's no-one else like you.”

He was able to break the gaze then, dip his head and toe the floor. “I know.”

“You... your wife was also pre-war? Yes, of course she was.” The enthusiasm faded from Danse's voice. “I see. So there would have been two of you, if not for the Institute. Waking up alone must have been very hard.”

“Yeah,” Nate said.

He gestured down the aisle of pods. “She's in here?”

It was hard to speak. He nodded.

Danse's voice was soothing. “I can wait, if you want to see her. Take as much time as you need, soldier.”


	4. Chapter Four (Danse)

They took their leave of the vault. On the way out, Nate remembered a prototype cryo-gun he hadn't been able to acquire before and paused to pick the lock. His hands were shaking, which could have been down to cold, but the light sheen to his skin told Danse he was running a fever. When Nate handed the gun over to him, the impression left by his hands was warm. 

He took Nate freely giving the gun as his insurance that Danse would keep his word – that he possessed the only valuable technology contained in the vault and so would definitely have no reason to search for more. It was an unnecessary gesture; perhaps the cryo pods would have been of mild interest to the Brotherhood, but it wouldn't be worth the dent it would put in Nate's trust. He took the gun anyway, because the faux-obligation would make Nate feel better, and Ingram could tinker with it and have fun giving people frostbite.

Back in Sanctuary, Nate quietly withdrew to one of the houses, a bright blue structure suspiciously free of settlers wandering in and out, as they did with every other building. It stood to reason this was Nate's home then, and likely had been before the war, as he'd mentioned only just reaching the nearby vault on time. He had to wonder how different Sanctuary must have looked back then, when the trees still had leaves and the cars were more than a rusty chassis. Though faded and chipped this was one of the most colourful places Danse had seen in the wasteland; back in it's day it must have been beautiful. Did staying in such a place, knowing what it once had been, elicit feelings of comfort or loss? Both, perhaps.

 _Pre-war._ His quiet, unflinching knight, a centuries-old relic. He'd more than earned his place in the Brotherhood through his actions and dedication, but now he could provide a goldmine of knowledge into the workings of the old world. His mind raced in anticipation... but now wasn't the right time. Nate spoke very little at times, but the silence was usually comfortable. The short journey back from the vault hadn't been.

He stayed up to work a little while, placing himself at the power armour station opposite the bright blue house. Armour maintenance was a worthy use of his time, but more importantly it provided a good cover for staying within close proximity to Nate. He glanced over at house periodically for signs of Nate emerging, and kept an ear out for the sound of anything being broken or otherwise vented upon. Nothing. There would likely be no activity until the middle of the night, then, given Nate had the same brand of insomnia Danse had, attacks were more common in the early hours. As he usually only managed a few hours of sleep at a time, retiring to bed now would permit him one, maybe two shifts before investigating Nate again was called for.

He woke up from the tail-end of a usual nightmare to find Dogmeat nosing at his hand and whimpering. By his count it was approximately 0200 hours, in line with his predictions. He rolled out of bed at once and snatched up the purified water he'd set aside. “I understand. Lead the way, boy.”

The house was deathly silent when he arrived, the rooms empty. There was a small side closet that must have been used for storage – he almost missed it, but fortunately Dogmeat lead him straight where he needed to go, good dog. The rusted shell of an old washer and dryer occupied most of the room, and Nate was tucked in the corner behind them, knees drawn up to his chest and head bowed. His shoulders rose and fell haphazardly with staggered breaths, each sound emerging as a pained wheeze.

He reached out to touch Dogmeat's fur when the mutt sat by his side and in doing so caught sight of Danse, jerking upright at once: “Paladin-”

“Back straight against the wall,” Danse said in his briskest voice and was relieved to see Nate comply at once, not so far gone that he couldn't understand words. “A position that allows easier breathing will help the feeling to pass. I am going to kneel in front of you.”

Wide eyes tracked him as he descended, taking position in front of Nate. He would've preferred to leave more room, but the cramped closet didn't allow for it. No matter. Nate's voice was strained, croaky. “This isn't – you shouldn't have to see-”

“As your CO... and your friend... it is my duty to help you through situations such as these.” He had to take care not to sound too stern in case Nate interpreted it as being berated. A low, quiet tone but firm, so his commands would be followed. “Now, I will count. I want you to inhale through your nose, and exhale through mouth. Do you understand?”

Nate's eyes were still wide, but he nodded shakily.

“Inhale, 1-2... exhale, 1-2...” this for a few counts, and then: “Inhale 1-2-3-4... exhale 1-2-3-4...”

It was a slow process, but he reduced Nate's breathing to acceptable levels. He was still several shades paler than usual, however, and the air between them was clammy with sweat. Danse offered him the water.

Tired though he was, he managed to raise an eyebrow. “You... you knew this would happen?”

“You were exhibiting the common signs on the way back from the vault. Fever, inability to speak. You stumbled once.”

Nate closed his eyes. “Perceptive. I wish you weren't.”

“Without my intervention you would have been in that state for a much longer duration.”

“And you wouldn't have had to see me this way.” The expression he wore couldn't be equated with anything but shame. Dogmeat whined next to him. This, this part was always the hardest. He could talk a soldier through the breathing troubles, restore them to relative physical normality, but the mental part afterwards, the embarrassment... there was no standard technique for that. Nothing he could say to make it better, that couldn't also make it tenfold worse.

What could he do, but be honest?

“Nate. Please look at me.” When the man opened his eyes again, however sluggishly, Danse spoke as seriously as he was able. “We've just come from the _Glowing Sea_ , then into a vault I know you would have rather not returned to. To say it's been a rough few weeks is a serious understatement. This is a completely normal response, the fact that I was able to anticipate and intervene this well should be proof enough of that.”

Nate shook his head, mouth grim. “I should be – better.”

“You are better. You're the best soldier under my command. But how often, or rarely, you break down is not an accurate determinant of your worth.” He hesitated. Should he mention Haylen...? Normally he would keep confidentiality but Haylen would be alright with sharing, he thought. Especially if her story helped out someone else in need. “What do you think of Scribe Haylen? Do you think she's... worthy?”

He was given a momentarily confused look. “Of course she is.”

Danse shrugged. “Well. She went through something very similar to this shortly before we met at Cambridge. It didn't diminish her standing to me, at all. Nor does this diminish you.” He glanced to the side for a moment, unsure whether to share his own falter during the Haylen incident. Sometimes you needed to be the pillar of strength to bolster others, and sometimes you needed solidarity in vulnerability. “The only one diminished was me, I think. I... didn't handle it as well as I could have.”

After he'd shared the story, including a few self doubts he would have otherwise kept private, Nate asked wryly: “So if Haylen had a free hug, do I get one too?”

“I, er-” Occasionally, Nate would slip something into conversation that just crossed the boundary of friendship. He'd done this before with Cutler too. _I care about you too much to let that happen._ It was intended to be brotherly he was sure, but... “It would depend. On the circumstances. Did you mean now, or...?”

Nate laughed softly. And Danse felt – how? How to describe it? He rarely sought to make people laugh, didn't really see the point, but when Nate did it was... there was a sense of accomplishment, maybe. Happiness. “I'll keep it in reserve. Never know when I'll have to whip out the IOU.”

-

The event was scarcely mentioned after that, which was fine. Nate hadn't pleaded him to keep it secret from anyone else, meaning the expectation that Danse wouldn't do so was already in place. This was good, a sign of trust and friendship that he hadn't been on the receiving end of for a while. Nate had already helped him plenty of times, particularly when he'd spoken of Cutler and his fear of losing another close friend. Knowing that he could return the support he'd received back then was a rewarding feeling.

He had no wish to pressure Nate further, and hoped he had allowed enough time for recovery... but there was still the matter of him being pre-war, and what his knowledge could do for the Brotherhood. He'd already calculated several measures he could take to ensure Nate was _interviewed_ rather than _interrogated_ , but before any of that he needed to obtain his consent. Once they'd made camp for the night and ensured nothing would disturb them, he brought it up.

“Talk about life before the war?” Nate scratched the back of his head. “You mean like... what I had for breakfast every day, or...?”

“Well-” he'd mulled over so many topics of discussion it was difficult to know where to start. “It would be beneficial to verify our understanding of the timeline, for one. It's possible we may have mixed up some historical events, having no-one to confirm them. But also... what people's reactions to said events were, at the time. How it affected their their attitudes, their daily lives... even their eating habits, yes.” Nate snorted. “It sounds insignificant, but those kind of details aren't covered in technical documents. We know what happened but we don't know what it was _like_. You could provide a valuable insight.”

“I'm not sure that stuff counts as _valuable._ ”

“Anything you can offer is valuable.” In a softer tone, he added: “Your experience offers a unique opportunity. No-one else can provide the information you can.” 

“Ghouls?” Nate pointed out. “Most of them are pre-war as well, you know.”

“Ghouls are not an acceptable source of information. They're uncooperative and besides, the radiation rot in their brains could affect the integrity of their recollections.”

He'd misstepped; Nate tensed up immediately. “Radiation rot? Really?”

Danse sighed. Nate was always too lenient when it came to ghouls. “It's an accurate assessment. How do you think they become feral?”

“But they're perfectly sane up until that point. Even then, that there are sane ghouls 200 years after changing shows that their necrosis has a chance of missing the brain entirely.”

“It's far more likely that their necrosis is simply delayed. Every ghoul will turn feral eventually.”

“But there are pre-war ghouls who haven't turned feral yet.”

He shrugged, a bit more defensively than he should have. “Then it is simply a matter of time. It could be another 200 years, it could be tomorrow. Their radiation leaves nothing untouched, and that is why anything they share cannot be taken as accurate. And, as I stated before, they're uncooperative.”

“Maybe they'd be a bit more cooperative if you didn't assume they were all braindead?” Nate answered sharply. Before Danse could reprimand him, he continued: “You know if the Brotherhood was on better terms with them you'd already have all the answers I could give you.”

He scoffed; “Well I'm sorry I can't trust something that might one day rip my face off.” 

“A human might pull out a knife and stab you. Ghouls and ferals are no more synonymous than humans and raiders, can't you see that?”

“It isn't the same and you know it. Nonhumans can't be judged by the same standards as us.” This was the bad influence of that... _detective_ from Diamond City and the ridiculous ghoul from Goodneighbour. Nate spent far more time around both than he was comfortable with. “You're much too trustful of ghouls. _And_ synths – despite the fact we're explicitly out here to eliminate them.”

“To eliminate the _Institute_ , synths can't help how they were made. They're just the people caught in the crossfire.”

“See, there you go again. They're not people, they're abominations.”

“They're not-” Nate stopped and took a breath, continuing through clenched teeth. “They are not abominations. They have hopes and fears and – Names. They have Names. How do you explain that?”

“Everything about them is manufactured. Their Names are likely tattooed on, or specified during their creation.”

“And their matches? People who have a synth Name on their wrist?”

“An abnormality that should be pitied and rectified.” He'd only seen a few cases of people having a synth designation as their Name. If it happened to anyone in the Brotherhood they usually had it removed – a painful process, one that had to be repeated every time the Name resurfaced, but it was better than bearing any ties to an abomination.

Nate, however, looked furious and hurt at the prospect, the most emotion Danse had ever seen from the usually stoic soldier. Why? Nate had been married to his match, the happy ending most could only dream of. That was what Names were supposed to do, why would he advocate their misuse? “Ab-abnormality or not, it happens. So synths are part of fate, meaning they're practically human.”

He folded his arms, metal clanking and scraping. This was getting ridiculous. “Alright, fine. Ghouls don't have Names. They're definitely sub-human, then.”

“What? God, Danse – they have Names, they're just burned for crying out loud.”

“Is that so? How do you know the Name doesn't disappear once they become a ghoul – the moment they can no longer be classed as people?”

“That's ridiculous! You can't use the lack of a Name to revoke humanity. What, does a left arm amputee not count as human the moment they lose theirs?”

“Exactly,” he growled. “If you can't use the lack of it to _revoke_ humanity, you can't use the presence of it to _grant_ humanity. Synths having Names, deliberately designed or not, does not make them human, and they shouldn't be treated as such.”

Nate glared at him for a good minute then tore his gaze away, mouth drawn tight. “Fine. I'm not giving an interview to the Brotherhood.”

He couldn't help a derisive sound. “Really. That's your solution? You're going to hold your knowledge hostage until I agree with you?”

“You want information, ask a ghoul. I'll verify or correct whatever they say. But I'm not telling you anything you could find out just fine if you were a little nicer to people.”

“We are nice. To _people_.” When Nate didn't answer, he rolled his eyes. “Are you going to keep being this childish? I expected better of you.”

“I expected better of _you_ ,” Nate snapped back.

He ought to have charged him for insubordination, but that wouldn't change Nate's beliefs – probably reinforce them further, if anything. How could he make him understand that he was mistaken? That synths and ghouls weren't even close to human, couldn't be judged by the same standards, couldn't be given the same rights. He took a breath, tried again: “You're pre-war. From a time when there were only humans,” he started, hoping the calmer tone would help Nate see reason. “You should know better than anyone what should and should not be. Supermutants, ghouls, synths – they should not be. They all came into existence because of the folly of man, not the will of nature, and those mistakes should be undone.”

Nate just shook his head. “I don't want to talk about this any more.”

-

Well. He hadn't been able to persuade him – even trying to continue the conversation a few more times, he'd only been given the cold shoulder – but maybe Nate would at least consider the points he'd made. They were, he thought, much stronger than any of the counterarguments, but he wasn't sure it would be enough. Nate was so quiet, compliant, that it was easy to forgot that he could be stubborn too.

The argument had much further reaching consequences than he thought, as Nate flew him all the way back to the Prydwen, then announced his lone departure.

“I see,” Danse said stiffly. “Are you going to pick up your next mission from the proctors?” _Are you going to keep serving the Brotherhood?_ He wouldn't leave, surely. Not after everything he'd done so far, the progress they'd made towards breaching the Institute.

“I'll continue to run whatever tasks are required of me,” was the formal answer. He'd carried a dull mood ever since their argument. It twisted something in him to see, but what was he supposed to do? Renege on all his beliefs to appease one subordinate? Agree that the Brotherhood should bow down to Nate's superior wisdom, regardless of how many good lives had been lost to those monstrosities?

He tapped his foot sharply against the deck, though in power armour it was more of a stomp. “Well then. When the mood suits you, come and find me again so we can continue our work.”

Nate's left shoulder twitched, but he gave no other response – not even meeting Danse's eyes. He simply nodded and turned, making his way to the proctor's quarters to pick up a few new errands. Given Danse didn't see him again afterwards, he assumed he'd made straight for the vertibirds.

Something in his chest hurt, and he berated himself for it. Ridiculous that this glorified tantrum should have such an effect on him when he was clearly in the right. Nate needed to conform to the Brotherhood, not the other way around.


	5. Chapter Five (Nate)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter, much as the inconsistent length irks me I couldn't find a decent place to split it. Also TRIGGER WARNING for mentions of self-harm in the Cait section.

He just needed... a break. That was all. Time to step back and cool off before this argument soured their friendship for good. Maybe it already had. He knew, going by Danse's firm goodbye, that this act of separation wouldn't change any of his views, which left them at an impasse. 

His unending concern for the people under his command. The soft way he'd spoken of Cutler. Soothing words in the dark to _breathe on my count, 1-2-3-4..._ He didn't understand how someone so kind could hold such hatred in their heart. 

But that was the Brotherhood in a nutshell, wasn't it? Good people, bad ideals. Maxson he'd always thought too fanatical, but it was still apparent that he cared deeply for his soldiers, and they returned that fierce loyalty and love. Ingram, Cade, Quinlan, even Teagan... Haylen and ugh, Rhys he supposed. All good, mostly-noble people. But they shared Danse's views that it was acceptable to mistreat someone for being different – and that wasn't something Nate was sure he could abide.

He took Curie at first. Perhaps because he needed someone as far from Danse as possible, who disavowed prejudice so much as to be impractical and naïve. Some pre-judging was called for in the wasteland like, say, that guy with the warpaint and mohawk was a raider, and would probably try to kill you. Curie was far too trusting. But then according to Danse, so was Nate.

The whole area of robots was a little tricky, since they were, well, robots, and not quite people. Codsworth freely admitted he didn't dream, didn't feel emotion as humans did, and couldn't act outside of his programming. But he hadn't been programmed for a nuclear fallout and yet had dealt with it, albeit by attempting to cultivate dead petunias for 200 years. So did he count as sentient? Did Curie? In the end, Nate thought, it wasn't for him to decide. When Curie asked to become more human he agreed, because it was her choice to make and not his.

In her new form they spoke at length about many things, so it was inevitable that Names would come up. Sat across the table from him over breakfast, she put her hands palm-up on the surface, so he could see the writing scrawled across her left wrist. “I have been wondering... this is an indicator of one's... match, no? It is not something I have much knowledge of, seeing as my old body had no such thing.”

“That's right. It's the name of the person you're supposed to be with for the rest of your life.”

“Romantically?”

“Usually, but it can be platonic as well. People who are matched almost always have aligning views and preferences – so if someone has no desire to be in a physical relationship, their match won't either.” At least, he couldn't recollect any matches where the two people wanted wildly different things. “That person is your soulmate, after all. They're supposed to understand you in a way no-one else could.”

“That sounds wonderful.” She looked down at her wrist, curling and uncurling the fingers of her left hand., “But I have to wonder, this Name on my wrist... it belongs to the one who inhabited this body before, yes? G5-19. So it is not my match, but hers.”

He blinked. “I'm... I'm not sure. It didn't change when you took over the body, did it? Or was there a blank space there before?”

“No, the Name has remained unchanged.” She smiled, but her lip was wobbling slightly. “It is... I had no Name before, so I have not lost anything as such. But I would have liked to have a Name of my own, a... soulmate. Someone who was intended just for me.” So easily overwhelmed by still-new emotions, she hiccuped and scrubbed her eyes. “Oh! Selfish, isn't it? I should think of the other person. Matched to G5-19 only to discover she had been wiped before they could even meet. What a terrible thing to learn.”

He shuffled, unsure what to do. He'd never been great at dealing with tears. “It is sad, if that's the case. But it might not be... Names have a way of forecasting what will happen to the person they're written on.”

“H-how do you mean?”

With no small amount of hesitation, he spoke of Nora. Curie knew he was pre-war – now both Danse and Nick knew he'd tentatively told a few more people, Curie among them because she believed him without question, without him needing to return to the vault for proof. 

“...So you see, my Name didn't even appear until some 200 years into the future, when synths came into existence. I _couldn't_ be matched to Nora, because I was destined to be frozen inside the vault and wake up here... and she wasn't.” Such an awful, awful fate. He couldn't dwell on it. “If it predicted my future so precisely then maybe... maybe fate knew G5-19 would fail the memory transfer and be empty until you came along. What if that Name you have was never intended for her, but for you?”

Her eyes were wide and wet. “Do you think that could be the case? If it is so I feel... I am happy, but I am... upset that I am happy, if that makes sense? It is an even greater tragedy for G5-19 if she was destined to become a vessel, when she wanted nothing more than to be her own person.”

“That's just... how it works sometimes. Fate is harsh at times, considering it's meant to produce joy.” He touched his own wrist, hidden under the pip-boy though it was. “I sometimes wish Nora had been matched to someone else, you know? Someone who could have made her happy, in the time she had left.”

Curie made a sad sound. “ _Mon chéri._ You did make her happy, yes? Monsieur Codsworth tells me you were a wonderful couple.”

“I tried, but the issue was always just... there. That she had my Name and I didn't have hers. Wouldn't it have been kinder if she had someone else's?” He sighed. “But back then it was much easier to find your match, so if she'd had another Name she would have found and married them instead. I would have been alone and under the impression that I could never have anyone, because my wrist was blank. Maybe I would have...” Well, there were no maybes. He knew what that sort of loneliness would have driven him to do. “...She needed to have my Name to make sure I lived to enter the vault, even if it meant she had to live as one half of a whole. That's what I struggle with the most I think – that I was prioritised over her. How does fate decide that? Who gets to be happy, and who's just a stepping stone for someone else's happiness?”

“Is is a massive question, no?” Curie agreed. “This fate, what is it? Is a a deity-like figure, a force of nature, or simple chance? Given the factors that affect matches there must be some deliberation, but is fate... conscious of what happens? Or is it more of an algorithm?”

He could do nothing but shrug. “Even the greatest minds of my age couldn't figure that one out.”

-

Curie had endless commentary about everything she felt, which was a lot. _Oh! The sunlight feels warm on my skin! Can you feel it too?_ And _this is toothpaste? Why does my mouth tingle?_ And _Look! If I submerge my hands in water, the skin goes wrinkly!_ These were all things he'd never paid attention to before, took for granted because it was just part of living. Now he found himself cataloguing everything.

There was something uplifting about it. In this ruined, broken, desolate world, the sunlight still felt nice on his skin.

Unfortunately while Curie was in a position to admire every new and pleasant sensation she came across, she was also caught off guard by every unpleasant one. It wasn't so bad if it was minor, a paper cut eliciting a startled _ow!_ then abject fascination as she theorised why paper cuts hurt so damn much. But in one fight a feral catapulted into her hard enough to break her collarbone, and her wail of pain was about the worst sound he'd ever heard.

She was a little put out to be left on the benches from then on, but he hoped he'd explained why well enough. The drawback of humanity was fragility, and he just couldn't bring himself to drag her into danger everyday. Besides she had research to conduct, people to help... a match to find, if his theory about G5-19's fate was true. Whether it was pre-destined or not he liked to think he'd helped her into a new body because it was the right thing to do. Nothing would change his mind on that.

-

He took MacCready because he was capable, and very good at not getting himself hurt. He also really really hated the subject of Names. The notion that he hadn't matched Lucy because she was fated to die before him had crossed his mind before, it seemed. 

“What sort of person or force or god or whatever looks at people when they're born and says 'you get to live happily ever after, you don't. You _think_ you'll live happily ever after, but then die young and leave someone with nothing'. That isn't fair,” he said vehemently one night, after they'd both had way too much to drink and the topic was discussed with more rowdiness than it should've had. “It's more than not fair, it's... it's _cruel._ I don't want to be part of that.”

“Everyone's a part of it,” Nate insisted, slurring, “Everyone. You can't escape it.”

“I can try! You there, huh?!” he shouted to the sky, as if that were where fate resided. “This Names stuff is bullsh – is bull _crap!_ You don't get to tell me who I can be with, and – frigging – kill them off if they don't fit into your perfect fairytale ending.” With the last swig of his bottle he looked back at the floor, sullen and despondent. “Everyone talks like fate is this great thing that gives people joy. All I've seen it do is take away.”

-

Deacon didn't have a Name. He eventually admitted he'd had it removed, which made sense; if you spent your life switching from one identity to the next, having a Name as a constant identifier could prove a problem. It was a logical step. 

But he'd had it _removed._ Nate tried to be impartial, but he was pretty sure his thoughts on the matter had come across. Old anti-communist propaganda claimed the Chinese removed Names as a form of torture. Like most propaganda it probably wasn't true, but the notion had certainly cemented the red menace sentiment of the time. To remove someone's Name was monstrous. For someone to do it _willingly_ was...

Deacon tended to drop in what Name he'd had before into conversation, a different one each time. Usually along the lines of _Rosy Palms_ or _Beef McBrisket._ It was funny, but he couldn't suppress the chill he got every time he remembered that Deacon had stripped his own fate – and that of someone else – on purpose. He could never stay around the Railroad agent for long before something in him compelled him to take his leave.

-

Of all the people he ended up travelling with the most, it was Cait. _Cait._

Maybe he was drawn to brusqueness. She didn't mince words or hold back on what she wanted to say, and there was a certain comfort in that – it was better to know where he stood. At first he stood in very low regard, he got a lot of _Fuck I wish you'd talk more_ and such. But he dragged her into plenty of fights, which she loved. And when he occasionally resorted to acquiring items the sticky-fingered way rather than through persuasion, and she always laughed in delight. _Never knew you had it in you, Mr Goody Two Shoes._

As he came to learn, there was more to her than fighting and stealing. A lifetime's worth of pain, to be precise, that made his own struggles seem especially trivial by comparison. He knew it wasn't a contest by any means, but for all his angst over the blank space on his wrist, never belonging to anyone, he'd had people who loved him. Cait hadn't had anyone, not from the moment she was born. In such a harsh life, he thought, a Name must have been the only comfort she could cling to. Of course, he was naively mistaken on that front too.

Her wrists were wrapped tight, tight, tight, and stayed that way until after Vault 95. It felt like a ritual when she unbound them over the light of their campfire, unravelling the leather strip by strip. Underneath was a matted mess of scar tissue – on both wrists but more predominately the left. He pressed a hand to his mouth to smother the yelp he would've made.

“Right mess, isn't it?” she said, while he held the wrist in his hands, fingers just skirting the damage. He wasn't sure he could bring himself to touch it – it hurt just to look at, to imagine how something so awful could have been inflicted. There was no way you could get this kind of damage by accident. “Started with the slavers, 'cause they want you to know you don't belong to anyone but them. And then...”

He looked up, wide-eyed, “And then?”

“It healed up a bit over time. You could sorta see the writing again at one point. But I couldn't stand the sight, so I burned it again.”

“Wait – on _purpose?_ ”

She shrugged blithely. He knew by now the tough front was just that, but he almost envied her sometimes. That she could talk about her demons so freely, bear the pain of reopening all her old wounds. “I was low. I looked at the Name and at meself and thought, 'who the hell would want to be matched with this?' Kept thinking what would happen, if they stumbled across me one day. What they'd think, what they'd say.” Her fingers curled into a fist, the tension of her wrist raising the patchwork of warped skin even further. “So I made sure they'd never know. And every time it healed up and the Name came back I'd do it again, and again, until it didn't heal any more.”

He wasn't sure how to ask. But he had to, didn't he? “And the other wrist?”

She held up her right wrist too, a matching, mutilated pair. “Punishment for turning into the person I did, I suppose.”

“Jesus, Cait.”

She gave a little, bitter half-laugh. “Yeah.”

He didn't even know what to say. Words had never really been his strong suit, especially when it came to comforting other people – hell, he couldn't even comfort himself. Instead he moved his skittish fingers over her scars, closing his hand over them, unflinching. He hoped it would be enough to say what his hesitant mouth couldn't.

“At the time it felt like the right thing to do – the only thing to do. I never thought I'd get out of the combat zone, get clean...” slowly, her clenched fingers opened up, the tendons in her wrist descending. Nate found himself relaxing as well. “I've you to thank for all of that. For making me into someone who... who has a shot at making someone happy, instead of ashamed.” Lighter now, a smile curled her cracked lips. “Better hope they can make me happy too, eh? There's a lot of arseholes in the world and they've got to match _someone._ It'd be just me luck if I ended up with one.”

He laughed quietly. “They need to be a bit of a dick, Cait. You'd be bored with someone nice.”

“Like Dansey Pants? You're too right I'd be bored. Dunno what you see in him.”

He blinked. “See in him?”

“You telling me you _don't_ want to bend that man over a workbench? Or have him bend you, whatever.”

He could hardly speak for spluttering. “What – that – _no_ , I haven't – not – not like that.” He was absolutely sure of this fact, only Cait was grinning at him like she was in on some big secret. “I _don't._ And I es-especially don't see much in him right now. He's not being nice enough. Or to enough people.”

“You don't need to be nice to be a great fucking lay,” she wiggled her eyebrows at him, while he groaned and put his face in his hands. “Really though, I get it. He needs to cut back on the Brotherhood shite a bit before you can get together. You're not the slam 'em and sling 'em type.”

“I'm not the _anything_ type,” he mumbled, mortified, but she just laughed.

-

Despite the fact that it came at his expense, Cait's jovial mood had left him feeling oddly optimistic himself. He thought of her in the combat zone, the stumbling, seething mess you could hardly tell apart from the raiders she fought. Now she laughed like she meant it, she faced her flaws, and she wore her scars with pride. 

They'd never really been self-inflicted, he thought. Even if it was her hands that did it, they were forced on her by a life of despair. He thought of MacCready's rantings and Curie's theories on fate. How cruel it could be. Cait, he hoped, would be someone that found happiness, and wasn't a stepping stone for someone else. It seemed like that might be a possibility now. And he'd _helped_ – maybe that was pre-determined too, just fate, never really his own choice. But it felt like his choice, his decision to investigate the combat zone, to take her with him, and to start seeing her as more than a fiery-tempered stereotype.

He'd helped her overcome her worst traits. Maybe he could do it for Danse too?

The circumstances were different, of course. Cait had approached him and asked for help, whereas Danse couldn't even see there was something wrong. But if he... took him to more settlements with ghouls, maybe. Let slip some harmless information about the work the Railroad was doing. There had to be something he could do to make Danse a better person.

A betterment he wanted to see because they were _friends_ , he added mentally, even his inner voice exasperated and flustered. Not because he wanted to – to be more, as Cait had expressed in much cruder terms. Honestly. He didn't know where she'd pulled _that_ notion from. 

He'd never thought of Danse like that. He hadn't, he realised quite abruptly, thought of _anyone_ like that since waking up; Cait flirted outrageously and not once had the idea of taking up any of her offers crossed his mind. Hancock could be very suggestive at times too, and he'd never responded to that either. On his list of priorities, hopping into bed with someone was pretty fucking low. But even after he'd rescued Shaun from the clutches of the Institute, had the time and mindset to be able to consider companionship... would he?

Would he with _Danse?_

It wasn't a... terrible thought. He was respectful, and noble, and potentially very kind. His appearance was what most would consider handsome, possibly? Nate wasn't a good judge of this stuff. He might be a better judge if he had a clue what Danse looked like outside of power armour, but he'd only ever seen him without it in darkness; when they made camp, or the one time when Danse had soothed him through a panic attack.

Soft words curling in the lightless space between them. _Nate. Please look at me._ Speaking highly of Haylen and lowly of himself in the same breath. Tripping over his words when Nate joked about hugs.

...He'd make someone happy, someday.

But not Nate. _M7-97_ still decorated his wrist. He was intended for someone else, and he wasn't sure he could take losing another person, unmatched but precious to him nonetheless, because fate said otherwise.

-

To his great annoyance, the next time he saw Danse in passing on the Prydwen all he could think was whether or not he found him attractive. His hair was quite thick and soft-looking, he had a strong jaw, high cheeks, dark eyes... eyes that were currently narrowed at him in displeasure. Oh. Yes. 

He still wasn't on the best terms with Danse. It had been about a month since the argument and while Nate made a point of still reporting to him every so often, it was always short and subdued. _Acquired coolant at request of Proctor Ingram, sir. Completed another field mission for Lancer Captain Kells, sir. Handed five technical documents over to Proctor Quinlan, sir._ Danse always looked at him expectantly for a minute, then when Nate didn't add anything else, he'd get a brusque _Carry on, Knight_ or something similar. 

Their distance stung him every time, but he wasn't willing to swear ghouls and synths were the scum of the earth just to appease Danse. He wasn't this time either, regardless of his recent Cait-induced musings. It was stupid anyway, he hadn't decided that Danse was suddenly godly attractive, he'd just... started noticing more things, that was all.

“Knight,” Danse began. He seemed especially tense today, arms folded tightly over his armoured chest, words sharp and stern. Nate preferred his softer voice. Christ, he had to stop thinking about that. “...I-”

“The teleporter is ready,” he blurted out before his thoughts could progress any further. “I've acquired all of the materials. Building has already started at the airport.”

Danse looked momentarily surprised, strangely enough. “I see. Then we will be able to breach the Institute?”

“Just me, the teleporter doesn't have the capacity for any more.”

He unfolded his arms, looking briefly... unsure? “That seems tactically unwise.”

He didn't know what else to do but shrug. “What will be, will be.”

-

And so what was, was.

He'd felt a numbness when Nick theorised the young boy travelling with Kellogg was Shaun. Ten years of his child's life stripped from him, the most important period of a father-son relationship, gone. He'd wondered if he'd recognise Shaun when he saw him, if he'd feel nothing but detached. If Shaun would be detached from him, unable to see him as the parental figure he'd never had.

If ten years left him numb, then sixty made him feel like he was back in the vault.

The man was calm, patient and softly-spoken. And completely detached. There wasn't a hint of affection there, its absence agonisingly obvious in every word, every gesture. The fact that he'd paraded an artificial child in front of him to see how he and it reacted, hmmed and clicked his tongue afterwards at the failed experiment.

His child. His last remnant of Nora. He couldn't see a hint of her in him.

 _Do what you have to do, and get out._ Acquire data for Ingram, thrust Virgil's holotape at Doctor Li and hope she got the message, talk to the other lead scientists and pretend that he didn't think them all monsters. He held it together as best he could until a scientist installed the relay on his pip-boy, smiling like they were elated to see him, like this was the start of a grand new partnership. 

When he teleported out he was back at the airport, an excitable crowd of knights, scribes and squires drawn by the display. A flurry of exclamations and questions besieged him, the elder's voice foremost among the fray, but he couldn't stop to answer. Pushing past them all with shaky hands and shakier legs, he only wanted to get away somewhere, anywhere but here. To find the smallest, darkest corner of the airport, where he could break apart in peace.


	6. Chapter Six (Danse)

A month. Almost a month since Nate had accompanied him back to the Prydwen in sullen silence, then departed for the world below without him. He came back to partake in the odd laughably casual mission, resupply and report his progress to Danse. But it was brief and brisk, and Nate always swiftly took his leave, alone. If not alone, then with the parade of misfits he'd acquired in his travels. The Miss Nanny model who was unsettlingly close to sentient for Danse's liking, the bratty mercenary and lately that mouthy woman with a strange accent and a million bad habits.

And not one of them looked properly trained in team combat; even the merc, he was sure, would bolt away the moment the situation was too hot instead of standing his ground to protect his partner. The woman was even worse, so hungry for a challenge, aka bad odds, she was likely to get herself killed and take Nate with her. _And_ they both seemed to think civilian clothes were adequate protection against the wasteland. They couldn't possibly guarantee Nate's safety as Danse could and yet here he was, warming the back benches. It was ridiculous.

He made a point of occasionally visiting Haylen and Rhys at the station, both to check on them and to keep himself from going stir-crazy on the ship. Unfortunately he'd taught Haylen to pay attention to everything, and this meant he himself was no exception. She caught him smoking outside at 0200 hours, which was already embarrassing enough, but then she brought up Nate's absence too.

“I mean, he's still accepting tasks. Heck, I have more pulse transmitters and signal receivers than I can shake a stick at,” were the hushed words, “But I can't help but notice that, um, he's not taking you along to find them. Or speaking about you much. And if I ask him, he goes all quiet – quieter than usual, I mean.”

Danse sighed, the action huffing the remnants of smoke from his lungs. “We had a disagreement over the threat posed by nonhumans some time ago. He seems to think they're harmless.”

Haylen made a _hmm_ kind of noise, which probably meant she agreed with Nate more than Danse. She'd always been on the soft side, but then she was a scribe, not a soldier. Still, at least she didn't openly challenge him on it and then sulk when he won the argument. “You couldn't work it out though, agree to disagree or anything? He... seems really sad. And, and if you don't mind my saying sir, you do as well. A bit. Maybe?”

He waved a hand; he didn't need his masculine pride coddled. “It's an accurate assessment. Our recent distance is... disheartening, to say the least.”

Haylen fidgeted, leaning in and speaking lower still, as though anything above a murmur would give them away. “Sir... Danse... are you sure that Nate isn't – _you know?_ ”

Something in his chest fluttered. He stomped the feeling down. “Haylen-”

“Just, just hear me out,” she pleaded. “You and him – you work so well together. I've seen him come in with other people following him and he's not nearly at ease with them as he is with you. And when you're apart, it's as though you've lost something.” As he tried to interject again, she held up an apologetic hand. “I'm just saying – and it's just a theory, _but_ – what if he's lying? About the surname? Only he lied about his past since he doesn't want you to know, and it makes sense he'd give a fake surname if he worried you'd find out that way. I just... I just think that could be possible, you know? He could be _the_ Nathaniel.”

He could've sworn his hand tingled in response, from his wrist down to the very tips of his fingers. God, but if it were true. If he'd finally met his match who was, as he'd always dreamed, a fellow soldier of the Brotherhood. If it were someone as thoughtful and intelligent and strong as Nate.

But it wasn't Nate. He'd read the files back in vault 111... he'd always been _Nathaniel Levine._ Always destined for someone else.

“Haylen,” he said more firmly, though the words emerged with an unintended rasp. “He's not the one.”

“I-” she looked honestly crestfallen. “...If, if you're sure.”

He flexed the fingers of his left hand, chasing the last of that tingle away. Static shock from the suit, or something. “I'm sure.”

-

Back on the Prydwen, making his way to the top deck, the elder strode over to his doorway as Danse passed: “Paladin. A word.”

“Of course, elder.” He followed dutifully, the two stood before the Prydwen's great curved front windows. The door slid shut behind them, and all comms were set to emergencies only. Maxson preferred a no-secrets ship, rarely opting for privacy unless the matter was serious.

“Your recent distance with your newest knight has not escaped my notice,” Maxson began with little preamble, “His visits to the Prydwen are growing more infrequent, and he hasn't permitted you to shadow him on the field recently. What has caused this?”

“A dispute, elder.” Was their strained relationship so obvious? Admittedly Arthur was likely keeping a closer eye on Nate than his other soldiers, both for his unusually swift initiation and his work against the Institute, but still... “Knight Levine has taken a lenient stance on the existence of nonhumans.”

Maxson frowned; “That's unacceptable. Our ethics are very clear.”

“I said as much, elder. We haven't spoken much since.”

“Then he must be reminded of the threat they pose. However... I'm wary of pushing him further away, especially when the leads he's given us are our best chance at breaching the Institute.” An irritable sigh. “To be blunt, we can't afford to upset him. I need you two to make peace, even if that means allowing – or appearing to allow – your usual standards to slip.”

“You want me to lie to him?” He disliked dishonesty on principle, but lying to Nate of all people made him even more uncomfortable. Could he bring himself to do it? Would he even be believed? He wasn't exactly proficient in the field of subterfuge. But Maxson gave an affirmative, and so he gave a heavy: “Yes, sir.”

The elder picked up on this right away, which was only further proof that Danse was rarely able to mask his true thoughts. “Paladin, I cannot stress how important your dealings with Knight Levine are to the Brotherhood. Are you aware he's completing more tasks for the Minutemen?”

Minutemen? Nate had always helped them on the side where he could, but never as his main focus. He shied away from the leadership Garvey had determined he should take. “No sir. How many more?”

“Enough to be worrisome. I've cause to believe he's considering using them as his assault force against the Institute.” It was a grim prospect, and Arthur's facial expression reflected as much. “The Minutemen are not known for being careful, or thorough. Even if their attack succeeds, they'll loose enough synths and scientists onto the Commonwealth for the Institute to reform in a decade. This cannot be allowed to happen.” He clasped his hands behind his back, affixing Danse with a critical look. “Say whatever you need to say to get on his good side. I need him to choose us – namely, to choose _you._ ”

Never before had the future actions and outcomes of the Brotherhood rested so squarely on his shoulders. He felt he should have been... prouder, somehow. Yet the prospect of manipulating Nate only felt painful. But orders were orders – the word of his elder outstripped whatever personal opinions he had. “I understand and accept, sir.”

-

Lips pressed lovingly against his neck. Danse thought _oh, it's going to be one of those dreams._

He cleared his throat, looking up at the Prydwen's metal ceiling, the arrangement of plating not quite as he knew it should look. “Before we begin. Did I lock the door to my room?”

There was a low chuckle. Huh, male voice. Usually in these kind of dreams, which he admittedly did not have often, his lovers were indistinct. Prone to switching shapes and genders mid way through, rarely anything so definite. “Yes, you did.”

“Ah. Carry on, then.”

“Glad to have your permission.” He _knew_ the voice, but it was hard to place it. He didn't need to know anyway, if it turned out to be someone he knew it'd only make things embarrassing when he woke up. He kept his eyes on the occasionally-shifting ceiling plates, the hum of the engines likely filtering in from the real world, accompanied by soft, wet sounds as the person kissed their way down his chest. It was obvious enough where they were heading – he was content to enjoy the shallow, pleasant sensation for what it was.

Instead, they got about down to his hipbone and drifted across to his left hand. Fingers grasped and intertwined with his, turning his palm upwards to meet their lips. Light kisses down to his wrist, where the words were marked.

He frowned; this wasn't where this was supposed to go. “What are you doing?”

Warm breath fanned over his skin as they laughed. “I like seeing what's mine.”

They kissed the words, right over where he knew the N to be. He couldn't keep his eyes off anymore, even if looking at them would break the illusion, if not outright wake him up. And so he finally lay eyes on them.

On him. On- “ _Nate?_ ”

Danse's wrist was to his mouth, half hiding a smile that the real-world counterpart rarely showed, though it was all the more precious for its scarcity. “That's my name.” And as he pressed his mouth again to the writing, the statement soundlessly repeated itself: _That's my Name._

“It's-” _not_ , he needed to correct it before Nate got the wrong idea, but the next time he parted his lips it was for a pink tongue to lick along the raised letters, and Danse's words found a swift death. He couldn't do anything but stare wide-eyed and speechless as Nate dragged an open mouth back up his hand, tongue poking out just enough that he could feel the pliable end against the length of his index finger. On reaching the fingertip he was enveloped by hot, wet mouth, down to the knuckle.

He was transfixed. Thoughts of what would happen the next time he saw Nate were firmly pushed aside as he lifted his middle finger and pushed it into the sweet heat of Nate's mouth alongside the first. Nate groaned and shuddered, tongue lashing excitedly around the two invading digits while Danse shifted and swore under his breath.

When Nate lifted his fingers to Danse's mouth, he accepted them at once, not at all invasive. He caught a brief flash of black writing on Nate wrist as he did so, not slow enough to see the actual Name but he knew, just _knew_ it was his. It had to be, didn't it? He hadn't, hadn't felt this close to anyone since Cutler, such a sense of familiarity, of _belonging._

Nate murmured some indecipherable compliment and moved closer, pushing Danse back down to the bed as he crawled over him, pressed their bodies together. His skin sang in response – arousal making itself known, sure, but it was the least of what he felt. They were joined, he was desired, needed, _loved-_

He woke up.

It may as well have been a regular nightmare for how sudden it was, that snap from asleep to alert with no in-between. The unshifting metal plates of the ceiling loomed above him. The hum and heat of the engines filtered through the walls. His sheets were slightly damp with sweat, just bunched up to disguise the stiffness between his legs.

He exhaled slowly, and with no small amount of exasperation. It hadn't even _had_ sex in it.

This, this was Haylen's fault. Though he couldn't truly be annoyed at her – only at himself, his own subconscious, for elaborating on Name conspiracy theories he knew weren't true. A standard sexual dream about Nate would have been horribly awkward, but bearable. But to dream of Names, the near-sacred bond that connected two people... to dream that Nate was his, and he Nate's? It crossed far, far too many boundaries.

He looked down at his wrist, half buried in rumpled sheets. Just the forename was visible, _Nathaniel._

So easy to pretend the other half was a surname he knew.

He had the brief, awful notion of taking himself in hand, stroking leisurely with his eyes trained on the scrawled writing. Ready to be interrupted by his match slinking through the assuredly locked door with apologies for their dispute, offers to finish what the dream started. Curled alongside him with that quiet murmur of a voice he'd come to know so well, an intimacy reserved for him, just him, no-one else in the whole world but him-

It was an approximate three minutes later that he found himself in his private shower, furiously scrubbing soap into his hair. Water recycled, slightly opaque, unheated. It didn't really abate the erection, but the temperature shock chased away whatever lingering thoughts he had. It was wildly inappropriate – bordering on blasphemous. He wouldn't abide it.

-

If nothing else, Nate's recent absence would work in his favour. He had plenty of time to put the dream out of his mind so that when he eventually faced his subordinate, sponsee, _brother_ , he would be calm and collected.

Naturally, Nate turned up that morning.

“Knight.” He was fairly sure his face wasn't red, that was a start. He managed to look him in the eye, despite being unable to separate the mildly puzzled face before him with the sultry smile he'd conjured up. He kept his greeting brisk and professional, successfully fighting off the stammer that threatened to intervene. Inappropriate personal thoughts weren't the only thing he had to conceal anyway – he hadn't forgotten Elder Maxson's order to reconcile, even through dishonesty. How to begin? _I've been thinking about it and perhaps not all synths are bad. I've considered the point you made about ghouls. I didn't have a questionably erotic dream about you last night._ Wait, not that last one. “...I-”

“The teleporter is ready,” Nate cut across him. Not just in words, but a broad slash through his flustered thoughts that sent them scattering to the winds, making room for the sheer significance of his announcement. The teleporter was ready. The Institute was reachable. He'd chosen the Brotherhood to do it.

He was proud, yes, of course he was. Relieved that he hadn't picked the Minutemen – they didn't have nearly the technical expertise the Brotherhood provided, any teleporter they built was more likely to rend Nate in two. The Brotherhood could keep Nate safe. It was quite hard to keep someone safe when you sent them through _alone_ though, as Nate went on to explain. The teleporter could surely be modified to allow more than one person through... two people perhaps, preferably accommodating a suit of power armour for at least one of them. But Nate was to go through with no company, no support, no backup plan.

 _What will be, will be_ , Nate stated. Danse didn't care much for the saying himself.

-

He was among the excited crowd when the relay fired up, watching electricity arc and spark between the pylons. A cheer rose as Nate vanished in a great beam of light, but he couldn't bring himself to join them. All he saw was empty space where Nate had stood, and the possibility that he might not ever come back.

-

He lingered around the airport for 4 hours, 37 minutes and 52 seconds when a beam near-identical to the first appeared on the charred platform of the defunct teleporter. The light and noise drew a crowd almost immediately, forming before the light had faded to reveal the person within. Reckless, a synth assault force may have poured out of the portal for all they knew. He ought to have chastised them – but he was right at the front of the crowd, staring more intently than any of them as the figure became visible.

Nate. It was Nate. 

Then he wasn't there any more, stumbling off the platform almost before Danse could register. Into the crowd, through the crowd, hands pushing curious bodies aside. There was a lot of _Hey!_ And _Where are you going?_ And _What happened?_ But he wasn't stopping to answer. Not even looking at anyone, just straight ahead at some indeterminate point with wide, glassy eyes.

He barked out a _give him some room_ \- but his voice was drowned out by Elder Maxson saying much the same thing, laced with such a fierce authority that the crowd parted like water. He wasn't sure Nate even noticed, marching onwards with the slightest stumble to his step. A few pushy brothers and sisters moved to follow but Danse snarled out another order to stay put, and they scuttled back into place. Whatever they had to say he didn't care to hear, only concerned with following in Nate's frantic footsteps.

He would find somewhere small, enclosed and isolated. Mentally mapping the airport, he determined the corner Nate was most likely to take and headed there at once, setting a brisk pace but not quite running. By the time he got there he wished he had, as someone had beaten him to it; he could see Nate curled up in the corner with his head in his hands, and Maxson was crouched before him.

It wasn't a terrible outcome. Maxson had seen many a shellshocked soldier, knew how to deal with them – he'd left an appropriate distance and his words were soft, coaxing rather than demanding. Besides, it was his right as elder to approach Nate first. He wasn't doing anything wrong. But he wasn't _Danse._

Nate's eyes flicked over to him and Danse honestly didn't know if Nate found the sight of him comforting or distressing. In any case he couldn't approach any further without overcrowding, resigned to staying back while Maxson crouched where he should have been, spoke the words he should have said.

The elder had it taken care of. He wasn't needed here. When he moved to withdraw he thought he saw Nate shudder and hunch over anew, but he couldn't be sure.

-

“The other knights have been instructed to not to ask you about what happened, but I suspect they'll try anyway,” he told Nate later, when they were back on the Prydwen. Levine's eyes had lost that awful glassy quality, but he still wasn't looking at Danse as much as through him. “I would prefer if you stayed in my quarters for tonight, and I'll take your bunk. That way you'll be afforded some privacy.”

“That isn't necessary,” Nate was quiet, and empty. Danse shook his head.

“It's no inconvenience to me, and far preferable to putting you under further stress. I insist,” he thrust the key at him before any more arguments could be made.

His suspicions only proved correct later, when he caught several knights loitering around the barracks, likely with a whole list of questions ready to bombard Levine with. Their nonchalance turning to visible disappointment when Danse announced his sleeping arrangements for the night, then came the slight tension to the room whenever a superior officer was in proximity. Everyone on their best behaviour, all conversations stilted and far politer than he knew military bunkmates to be. It didn't matter, he hadn't planned on staying among them. He stayed up to work on armour maintenance, and once it had reached the early hours he headed up to the forecastle to smoke the remaining time away.

He was through his third leisurely-paced cigarette when the door behind him creaked open. He glanced back in time to see Nate join him at the railing, arms wrapped tightly around himself.

“You should have brought a coat,” Danse commented idly, watching Nate brandish his own cigarette with shivering hands.

“I was too hot until I stepped outside.”

“My room is situated nearby one of the engines. It does get too warm in there sometimes.” Nate's skin had the sickly hue and slight sheen of fever, which he suspected had little to do with the temperature of his quarters. Still, it looked as though it was abating. “You're better now?”

The man nodded shallowly. “Yeah. I'm better now.” He shuffled. “Thanks. For lending me your room. You didn't have to.”

“I wanted to.” Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. He tried again. “You're welcome.”

They stayed side by side for a while, the silence heavier than it usually felt. It was Nate who spoke first: “...No questions for me then?”

He tapped the railing thoughtfully. “I specifically ordered the other soldiers not to bother you. It's poor form if I start asking you the exact same questions they had.”

Nate gave a little huff of a half-laugh. For such a small, weak sound, it brought him immeasurable relief to hear it. “You're too upstanding by far. I didn't plan to tell them anything, but I'll tell you.”

“Well... I take it you already relayed what you saw inside the Institute to Elder Maxson.” It was that latter subject that really had his curiosity itching. He looked over at Nate cautiously. “Was he... alright with you? Back in the airport.”

“Better than I expected. He needed answers... I couldn't give them right away. So he waited for me. I thought he'd be pushier.” The words were so quiet as to be nearly lost in the gale, but Danse heard them clear as day: “...But I would've preferred it to be you.”

He swallowed and nodded. “I would have preferred it to be me as well.”

Nate finally looked at him then. Pale and thin and wearier than Danse had ever seen, but no longer made of glass and inclined to shatter at the slightest touch. “Truce, Paladin?”

The mostly-burned cigarette slipped from his fingers, unbidden. He paid it no mind. “Truce, Knight.”

-

He was idly typing the report on his and Knight Levine's latest mission when his door all but slammed open. Through barrelled Haylen, slowed down only by the ammo bag she lugged in both hands, stuffed to the brim and clearly much too heavy for her. He startled back as she threw it unceremoniously at his feet, heart already thumping wildly at the alarming behaviour; “Haylen, what-”

“Danse, I need you to listen, and do exactly as I tell you.” Her actions rendered her breathless, she clearly needed to stop and recover, but she forced each word out anyway. As though fainting from the lack of air were less important than whatever she had to say. “You need to get off the Prydwen. Take the next vertibird, have it drop you outside the airport as fast as you can and – and-” she wobbled dangerously and he reached out by instinct to steady her. Underneath his hands, he could feel her shaking. Her skin was so pale it bordered on grey.

“Stop, breathe. What are you talking about? Why do I need to go?”

She clutched the front of his uniform, took a great gasp of air to fuel the next words: “There's no time. Go to Listening Post Bravo – on foot, don't have the vertibird drop you off there. They can't know where you are.”

“Why not? I don't un-”

“No _time_ ,” she wheezed, “Take bag. Go to Bravo, set up defences, wait. Do not go outside.” She looked up at him and her eyes were wide, slightly wet, more frightened than he had ever seen. “If you have even a shred of trust in me, please _please_ do as I ask.”

He had a million questions, but the look she gave him silenced them all. He did – he did trust her. He nodded numbly, picked the bag up and hefted it over his shoulder, strode out of the door without another glance back. He didn't think he could stand to see the expression she wore again.

-

When he unzipped the bag in Bravo he found it stocked with the materials to assemble a few turrets, some food, blankets and other survival supplies, all thrown haphazardly together. At the bottom was a half-crushed document enclosed in a paper folder, Haylen's handwriting across it reduced to a frantic scribble: _do not read until turrets set up_, last words underlined twice and circled. 

His fingers hovered over the folder for a minute before he snatched them away, instead grabbing the materials to make the bunker defensible. He trusted her. He trusted her.

-

The folder contained a single sheet of paper, a printed copy of some Institute data, some sort of profile. One of the countless bounties Nate had brought back with him after that first teleportation. It read _Synth designation: **M7-97**. Status: MIA, presumed desertion. Whereabouts unknown._

The person pictured on the document looked considerably less weathered, shorter hair and lacking stubble, but he'd looked in a mirror enough times to know who it was.

He just stared, for a while. Could've been minutes or hours. Started looking intently for flaws, some indicator that it was nothing more than a close likeness, but it was undeniable. Paced up at down the bunker, forcing himself to breathe properly. Tore the paper up. Regretted it immediately and tried to piece it back together. The little scrap of paper he had left said _synth. Synth. Synth._

He punched a great crack in the wall, pain screaming from his knuckles all the way up to his shoulder. Saw the blood, fake, synthetic blood, seep into the material of his gloves. Took them off and watched the wounds clot and begin scarring far, far sooner than they should have – like they'd always done, he thought, the realisation creeping like icy fingers up his spine. He should have known. Should have noticed he always healed faster than the others, tired slower, never got sick. Why didn't he know?

_Synth. Synth. Synth._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the chapter numbers aren't quite as you remember worry not, I just did a little reshuffle. I originally split a Nate-POV section into two chapters so I could have a consistent 2000 word length for each part... but with the latest additions it's become apparent that my chapter lengths are just getting longer. Sorry for any possible confusion!
> 
> Also look, this chapter almost had sex in it. Overshadowed by earth-shattering revelations but still, it was in there!


	7. Chapter Seven (Nate)

A Brotherhood messenger tracked him down and told him to report to the Prydwen immediately, though they couldn't say why. Maxson had plenty of high priority missions for him, mostly involving using his faux-alliance with the Institute to acquire intel, but he'd never gone so far as to send a summons. It could have been something good, like a promotion or technology breakthrough, but the urgency had him expecting the worst. He was always a glass half empty sort of person.

When he reached to Maxson's office, the look the elder wore only confirmed his cynicism. His tone was equally icy: “Is there anything you wish to tell me, knight?”

The hairs raised on the back of his neck. Danse had a similar effect on him when they first met, the air of authority that had his inner soldier scrambling to obey, but that had softened with time and camaraderie. It hadn't with Maxson – but then he was the elder, so it wasn't supposed to. “Tell you, sir?”

“About _Danse_.” The word was spoken like an insult. And no 'Paladin' prefacing it either. His stomach twisted with unease, but he still didn't know where this was heading, what he could know – what Danse had done.

“I don't understand, sir. What about Paladin Danse?”

He was given a long, hard look. Much as it made him squirm, he didn't have whatever answer the elder was looking for, only uncomfortable silence. Eventually, Maxson answered: “Proctor Quinlan brought me the decryted data you retrieved from the Institute. Among it was a list of synths that defected from the Institute... one of which is a perfect match for Danse.”

“I – what?” he knew what he'd heard, didn't need Maxson to repeat himself, yet the words somehow weren't sinking in. Danse, a synth? That wasn't – that couldn't- “That can't be right.”

“The evidence is absolute. We have a visual match and a DNA file, the same sort we keep on record for all our soldiers. Danse is a perfect match for a synth called M7-97.”

It was about then that his world stopped.

He couldn't liken the sensation to anything. For just that brief second there was no hum of the Prydwen's engines, no buzz in the metal floor below his feet, no chill leaking in from the frost-peppered windows. Maxson's mouth was still moving and sound was coming out, but he couldn't hear a word of it, couldn't process anything but that last little word.

_M7-97._

_Danse is M7-97._

It must have showed. Perhaps he'd gone a suitable shade of grey, as Maxson stopped to stare at him, eyebrows slightly raised. He mouthed something a few times – his name? – but Nate couldn't hear a thing until Maxson reached out and grabbed his arm, the vicelike pinch bringing everything sharply back into focus. “Knight!”

“Sorry sir,” he mumbled. His first thought was _Maxson can't know_. Not about his Name. He needed to believe that the shock was over Danse being a synth, not Danse being... being his... “I swear, sir, I didn't know.”

“...I believe you,” Maxson said. “Very well. I will absolve you from Danse's betrayal. But the matter must still be dealt with – Danse must be executed, and the task falls to you.”

His jaw just about dropped. “ _Executed?_ But he didn't attack anyone, or work with the Institute. He's marked as a runaway, you said, he's not affiliated with them. How did he betray you?”

“He is a synth. A singular representation of everything the Brotherhood hates, and has sworn to end,” Maxson spat. Before Nate could so much as open his mouth to process, he went on just as vehemently: “I'm aware of your lax attitudes towards synths; you're well-intentioned, but fundamentally misguided. We are in the Commonwealth to destroy the Institute and their creations. That includes all synths, no exceptions – not even one of our own.”

“But he chose to leave the Institute-”

“They are machines, they do not possess free will. It is far more likely Danse was programmed to believe himself a runaway, then joined the Brotherhood as a spy or sleeper agent,” his voice was absolute – were it any other subject Nate might find himself nodding along, swept up by the surety Maxson possessed. But not on this subject, after everything he'd seen. After Nick, after Curie, and especially after Danse. “Danse _will be_ executed for his betrayal, and you will carry out the task. This is a direct order.”

No, he wouldn't. He'd sooner die, he'd sooner take down the entirety of the Prydwen. He'd do those things in a heartbeat, but he couldn't make himself _say_ he'd do those things. Always actions over words, especially when the words were against someone like Maxson, who wielded speeches like a scalpel. Instead what came out was a mumble of “I'll find him, sir,” those half-truths that were the best attempt at manipulation he could manage.

-

The words were still bubbling in his chest when he went to talk to Proctor Quinlan, lips pressed shut as he nodded along to the man's expressions of regret, but resignation that Danse had to die. Almost spilling forth when Haylen interrupted and all but shouted at him, fighting to break free when she grimly told him to follow her to the vertibirds, only to take him to the empty lower decks instead. Nestled among the noisy engines where no-one could overhear, he realised her intent, and he couldn't hold his own back any longer.

She turned, started in a quivering voice: “Are you really going to-”

“I'm not going to kill him.” Oh, but it felt good to say it. Like a caged bird thrashing wildly against the bars, finally set free. “Haylen. I'm not going to do it.”

“I – o-oh. I thought you might take more convincing,” she shuffled, “I had a whole speech and everything. You're really not going to?” When Nate shook his head, she looked as much worried as relieved: “And... and if the elder orders your execution too?”

He shrugged listlessly. “I'll fight back. Or I'll die. Whatever fate decides.”

-

He headed for Listening Post Bravo on foot. Safer this way, but it gave him an unfortunate amount of time to reflect on what had happened, and what was going to happen.

He lasted about ten minutes before he gave in and stripped off his pip boy, rolling his sleeve up to see his wrist. _M7-97_ lay stark and bold, as fresh as the day he'd crawled out of the cryo pod. His match, the reason he'd had nothing but blank space on his wrist from adolescence onwards. Why Nora had always done that little flinch she couldn't mask when she saw the space her Name should've been. Why he'd run away and joined the military. Why his military service had earned him a place in the vault. Why he was crossing the radioactive wasteland this very minute.

Idiot that he was, he'd assumed his synth match would be somewhere in the Institute. He was on hyper alert every time he had to make another reluctant return trip there, always looking around to see if one of the synths caught his eye or stood out somehow. Spent ages thinking about whether they'd be loyal to the Institute or desperately want to escape – how he could facilitate the latter, or persuade the former. It hadn't occurred to him they'd be outside the Institute, that they'd live under a name that wasn't their synth designation. It would have never crossed his mind in a million years that it could be Danse. 

Maybe he was just projecting now he knew the truth, but it seemed almost obvious in retrospect. Smoking in comfortable silence on the Prydwen's forecastle. Walking through the Glowing Sea without a shred of fear. Breathing on his count in the panic-ridden darkness. There'd always been a sense of – of peace. It wasn't immediate and unmistakeable, like he'd been led to believe the connection between matches was, but it had been there. 

Then he'd opened up, told Danse everything he'd otherwise hidden from the world. He'd told Nick first out of necessity, because he needed to know whole picture to help him find Shaun, but he'd told Danse because he wanted to. Danse had returned it too, spoken of Cutler and Haylen and confessed in an uncharacteristic mumble that he'd never shared this with anyone else.

The only thing he hadn't told him is that he was a synth. It hurt a little that Danse hadn't quite trusted him with that, but he could understand it too. He must've known when joining the Brotherhood that no-one could ever know, though Nate had to wonder why a synth would want to join the Brotherhood in the first place. Safest place to hide from the Institute, maybe? Coursers were frankly terrifying, and good enough reason to go running into the arms of your enemy. 

What about his anti-synth views, though? Had he made them so extreme in an attempt to better disguise himself, or had he become so sold on the Brotherhood's doctrine over time that he'd forgotten his own origins? When Nate argued in favour of synths being people, was Danse secretly in agreement with him? That couldn't be right, there was no way their subsequent falling out had been entirely staged on Danse's part. But it made no sense for a synth to hate synths so passionately either.

So many questions. He was sure Danse would answer them all once he knew Nate wasn't a threat, that he had no intention of hurting him. That Nate had his Name across his wrist.

-

Danse hadn't known.

 _Fuck_ , Danse hadn't known.

“How did you not know?” he asked, but he'd worked it out even before Danse could give his miserable shrug. Curie, G5-19. Some synths underwent memory transplants to forget their lives in the Institute, they wouldn't remember they were synths, would they? The whole point was to wake up as someone else and not spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for coursers. Nate had thought the Memory Den was the only place that could do that kind of thing, but there must have been something similar back in Capital Wasteland. Go in as M7-97, wake up as Danse, never having known otherwise.

It explained why he'd joined the Brotherhood, readily accepted their synth hatred and argued bitterly with Nate over the subject. A part of him had hoped Danse was secretly proud of him for his kindness, been on the verge of telling Nate about himself and lamented the false anger he'd had to put on to keep his secret safe – but no, that had never been the case. His feelings on synths were genuine, and now he'd discovered he was the very thing he hated so much.

“You need to kill me,” Danse said quietly.

Such loathing, he couldn't even suffer himself to live. But Nate shook his head. “I won't.”

“I'm an _abomination_ ,” the last word choked out, like bile.

“The last time we talked about synths being abominations, I stopped travelling with you for a month. You know how I feel about this. I won't do it.”

“Maxson gave you a direct order. You defy him, you defy the Brotherhood. You'd undermine everything it stands for.”

“Suppose I'm undermining the Brotherhood then.” He crossed his arms. Petulant, but it had served him well enough before.

“Nate,” Danse said slowly, “This is not the time. If you disobey the elder you'll be kicked out of the Brotherhood at best, more likely declared an enemy and marked as kill on sight. Do not do this. Not – not for me.”

Nate gave him a smile. He hoped it was reassuring, but perhaps it was only sad. “Nothing doing, Danse. I'd sooner die than kill you. That's just how it is.”

Danse looked at him. Really looked, the same soul-examining look he'd been given when they first met, where he wondered if Danse could honestly see his aura or whatever. But this time he couldn't get a true read on Nate, or at least couldn't comprehend what he found. “ _Why?_ ”

“You're my-” _match. The one I'm meant to be with. The one I spent 200 years waiting for._ Which he... he couldn't tell Danse, he realised. After he'd just found out his earliest memories were implanted, his identity was based on falsity and that the people he'd called family wanted him dead? Nate couldn't add this revelation to the pile. “You're my friend.”

Danse gritted his teeth. “Cutler was my friend. More than that. I killed him.”

“Supermutants are a bit different to synths. Going berserk, eating people.”

“If our roles were reversed, do you think I would refuse to kill you?”

Nate shrugged. “I don't know, would you?”

Danse looked at the floor.

He went on, more nonchalant than the subject deserved, but it was best not to give it too much thought. He was no more sure of the answer than Danse was. “Either way, doesn't matter. It's just what you were taught. The Brotherhood taught me a lot of things, but killing someone for being a synth? For a creation they had no say in? I didn't take that one to heart.” 

Danse was still looking at the floor. His voice was but a broken whisper. “If you won't hold up the ideals then... maybe I should just do it myself. You don't have to feel guilty, and Maxson will have what he wants. Everyone wins.”

He just about stopped himself from grabbing Danse and shaking him, possibly slapping him for those words. It was the Brotherhood that needed the hit though, a big collective backhand for instilling this kind of mindset. Making Danse, Christ anyone, think that they weren't worthy to live, for something they didn't choose and couldn't change. “I don't _win_ ,” he hissed, the tone such a rarity from his mouth that Danse actually looked up, wide-eyed. “I'll have lost my best friend for an ideal I hate, on the orders of a man who thinks making someone feel like – like this-” he gestured wildly at Danse, “Is acceptable. Oh and there's a promotion riding on my obedience too, so I'll get to carry your title and sleep in your quarters and wear your power armour and all the other things that are _fucking worthless_ compared to you.”

For a moment, they just stared at each other. Danse in sheer disbelief, Nate in furious determination. There was a fire in his veins he'd never felt before – was this the bond of the Name, now that he knew Danse was his other half? No, it couldn't just be that. If Danse wasn't M7-97 but someone else, Nate would've still refused to kill him on Maxson's orders. Would've gotten just as angry at Danse's offer to do it himself. He'd told Danse he was his friend and not his match, but it didn't make the former any less true.

If he didn't have the the Name written on his wrist, Danse would still be a man he had a startling amount in common with, understood how he worked, appreciated the quiet nature most people found unsettling, and fought alongside him so well he felt damn near invincible. They would've been friends either way. He would've given that speech either way. He would've been willing to die for him either way.

“...Alright,” Danse said at last, his voice a low rasp. “If you feel that strongly – if you would be that unhappy without me – I suppose I have to live, don't I?”

He exhaled the breath he didn't realise he'd been holding. “Yes, you do.”

-

Take Danse's holotags, pretend he'd carried out the order, buy Danse enough time to find somewhere safer. He was talking about leaving the Commonwealth, a solution that made every fibre of Nate's being scream _no_ at the thought, but he couldn't justify asking Danse to stay, put his life in such danger. Not without telling him about the Name, and he couldn't do that, not when the man already had so much to bear. There had to be some other excuse he could use to keep Danse beside him... just until he wasn't in such a dark place.

His brain was still working overtime on reasons when they exited the bunker, and Maxson was standing there. They both froze as though caught in spotlights – certainly, Maxson's furious look could have matched the sun for its intensity.

“How _dare_ you,” came the low and seething words. “I knew you would have difficulty following through, but outright betrayal? My orders were clear. Why is this thing still alive?”

He argued, or tried to. The same cases he'd made when he disputed with Danse over synths; that they didn't choose their making, that the Institute should be punished rather than them, that many simply wanted to be free. That they were people who thought and dreamed and rebelled against their creators as much as any human. That they had Names, that there was a place for them in fate like everyone else. He'd thought Danse responded callously at the time, but it was practically gentle compared to Maxson's dismissal.

Maxson had been bred for leadership, words were the greatest weapon he possessed. For every point Nate made, he had a response that Nate couldn't shoot down except on the principle that it was wrong – and he and Maxson operated on very different moralities. He couldn't convince him, couldn't outspeak him, no matter what he tried.

Eventually, the elder lost his patience; “I will not argue with you any more, knight. You will kill that machine, or I will do it myself. Consider it a mercy I don't intend to have you executed as well.”

“It's alright,” Danse spoke, quiet and resigned. “You tried your best. I have no regrets, and neither should you.”

Heart beat wildly in his chest, lungs felt fit to burst. He couldn't – he couldn't – he couldn't make his words achieve the end he needed, he had to _do_ something instead. If they wouldn't listen, he had to make them look.

He started unbuckling his pip-boy.

Maxson narrowed his eyes; “What are you doing? I said _kill it._ ”

“Can't,” he choked out. His fingers kept fumbling but finally the damn thing came off. “I can't do it. I won't do it. Because – because-” No words. He yanked his sleeve up and bared his wrist to Maxson, who paled as a result. For once, speechless.

“What is it?” Danse asked, sounding more alarmed than anything else. He saw, from the corner of his eyes, Danse step forward – then stop with a sharp inhale. 

He couldn't turn to look at his face; whatever he saw there would make him falter and stumble again, and he needed to avoid that now more than ever. He stayed eye-locked with Maxson, and drew on that same fire he'd had when he delivered his speech to Danse. The Name, the bond, was the only thing in his arsenal that could match Maxson's all-consuming ferocity.

“You are asking me to kill my sponsor, my friend... and my _match_ ," he spat. “You know what the bond means. You know that if he dies, I'll go with him – and I didn't plan on it being by my own hand, so I guess it'll have to be by yours.”

Maxson argued, but the words were weak compared to the steely speeches of earlier. “There are ways to remove the Name... you could continue living, find someone else-”

“That's not how it works and you know it. It's fate – even you can't overrule that.” Finally, he dropped his wrist and softened his tone. “Elder, _please_. I don't want to be your enemy. Think of everything I've done for the Brotherhood, and everything I can keep doing. But you can't ask me to do this, or expect me to stand by and watch you do it instead.”

Maxson too, was extinguished. He stared long and hard at the floor for a long while before he spoke, the words bitter but resigned. “Danse... as far as I'm concerned, you're dead. You will not come into contact with the Prydwen or anyone... anyone _else_...” he added with a look at Nate, “From the Brotherhood of Steel. Anyone who sees you will have the standing order to eliminate you. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes,” Danse said hoarsely. “Thank you, Arthur.”

Maxson looked as though he had a retort, but he simply snapped his mouth shut, shook his head grimly, and stalked away. He threw a, “Report to the Prydwen when you're done. Knight,” over his shoulder, but nothing else.

Relief flooded Nate's every vein, he he didn't dare appear as anything less than stony-faced and ruler-spined until the elder was well out of sight. Once the sound of his vertibird preparing for ascent could be heard he exhaled shakily, his legs suddenly akin to jelly.

Next to him, Danse spoke in a remarkably small-sounding voice: “Nate?”

He chanced a look at him then, and was immediately glad he hadn't earlier during the stand-off. The expression was so utterly lost that the strength he'd summoned would've died immediately to make way for guilt. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled, gripping his bare left wrist, the Name caged in his fingers, “For having you find out this way.” This wasn't how he'd wanted this talk to go, not at all, but it had saved both their lives. All he could do now was deal with it.

“I don't – but I have – I thought-” when no one question could take precedence over the over Danse simply shook his head, still staring in abject disbelief. “Before, when I spoke of – of ending it myself. Why didn't you tell me then?”

His fingers tightened around the wrist. “I didn't want to tell you at all. I mean-” he added hastily at Danse's immediate protests, “ _Not yet._ After everything you've been through today – and I've only just found out myself so I needed time too – I wanted to wait. If you'd tried to go ahead with what you were planning I'd have told you, but only as a last resort.” He nodded over to the sight of the vertibird disappearing into the horizon. “Telling Maxson, that was a last resort. It worked, so I don't regret it... but I wish there'd been another way.”

Danse nodded numbly. His eyes kept drifting over to Nate's wrist but the Name was well and truly covered. He'd have bruises masking it later too going by how hard he was gripping, but he couldn't get his fingers to loosen up. It was the self-punishing mindset he was aghast at Danse having earlier, but, well. No-one said he had to lead by example. “We should go to the bunker. I mean, I should. You have to report to the Prydwen,” he said at last, since one of them had to come up with a plan eventually, and Danse was generally better at taking charge. His addition was more unsure: “Will you come back?”

“Yes,” Nate answered at once. “Always.”


	8. Chapter Eight (Danse)

Nate took a swift leave and Danse, for lack of any other direction, returned to the bunker. As the ancient elevator shuddered into motion he leaned against the rusty wall, exhaling slowly. There was... a lot to think about. A lot to be upset over. But right now he simply felt numb and hollow, too drained to manage any distress. The doors pinged at the ground floor, doors sliding rustily open, yet he remained in place for a good five minutes before he could muster the energy to move. 

He got as far as the crates strewn haphazardly in front of the elevator before he was compelled to sit down on the nearest one, hunched over in exhaustion. Thoughts swirled around his head: _not human, exiled from Brotherhood, life was false, this is my home now, Nate is my match._ He tried focusing on one thing at a time but they all kept jumbling together in an unending mantra. In the end, he went for the topic that gave him the least despair, if the most shock. He tugged the sleeve of his flightsuit up, made clumsy by weariness, until he could look at the Name beneath the dim lighting.

 _Nathaniel Clora._ Not _Levine_ , no matter how he squinted. He might've thought that perhaps Nate was mistaken, that they weren't matched, but he'd seen the _M7-97_ printed across his wrist. That was his – his designation. He'd torn up the piece of paper but he could see the words every time he shut his eyes, like an afterimage of the sun. The photograph of himself with short hair and clean, smooth skin, dressed in the stark white uniform of the Institute. 

Synth. Construct. Machine. He didn't have a name, he had a serial number. He didn't know where _Danse_ had come from and in retrospect, shouldn't that have raised alarm bells? That he'd always known he was called Danse despite being a lone orphan, no parents or siblings who could have bestowed it on him. His name was a lie, like everything else.

But not his Name. A part of him wondered if that was manufactured too, but then Nate had his designation and that couldn't be explained. He'd always considered synth Names akin to a birth defect, something that simply wasn't meant to happen, but here he was on the other side of the concept, unsure what to believe. From their brief alliance at Arcjet to their trek through the Glowing Sea, he and Nate worked perfectly together. The pride when he fought alongside him, the peace when they shared cigarette smoke and silence on the Prydwen... hell, Haylen had even theorised that they were matched, they were so well suited. Now it turned out she'd been right all along. Their match couldn't be defective. It just couldn't.

He dragged his thumb across the incorrect surname with a heavy sigh. He needed Nate to explain that one. To explain a lot of things. To just... be here, by his side. Though he was equally thankful the man wasn't here now, didn't have to see him in such a pathetic state. He needed to pull himself together and collect his thoughts by the time Nate came back.

He took a breath, and stood up from the box.

There was rubble strewn everywhere, ceiling beams half hanging-off, that cave-in to the right that could potentially invite mirelurks. Fortifications would need to be made, the damp from the cave contained as best as he could manage... this place was far from liveable, which was probably why it hadn't been claimed by any gunners or such before Haylen discovered it. He started his work, the million thoughts pounding through his head receding while his body moved on autopilot. With a clear, if short-term goal in mind and work to keep his hands busy, he could almost pretend at normality, if just for a little while. 

He'd just made a start repairing the first turret Nate had been forced to disable earlier, when the elevator rumbled to life, starting a shaky ascent up to the surface floor. It was much too soon for Nate to have travelled to the Prydwen and back, which meant it was someone else. 

The layout of the bunker left him no means to retreat, but the single – and very slow – point of entry gave him plenty of time to prepare for assault. He might've even been able to finish repairing this single turret by the time the elevator got back down, but he only needed to recall Nate fervently defending him to change his mind. He couldn't risk his life so foolishly when someone so badly wanted him to live. Instead he darted to the half caved-in back room, crouching where the office window used to be and poising his rifle along the sill. It wasn't the best vantage point, but he'd have the element of surprise at least. 

The doors screeched open and he caught the brief glimpse of power armour, heart thudding in his chest. Had Maxson sent soldiers after him already? He waited, equal parts fear and bitterness, that the people he'd once considered family had so eagerly come calling for his blood. Their threat level decreased dramatically when they all but stumbled out of the elevator, nearly tripping on a box. Clearly untrained, their power armour seemed more of a hindrance than a help. Under the lights he could see that it wasn't the Brotherhood's preferred T-60 model but a set of X-01, of all things.

“H-hello?” an all too familiar voice called. “D...Danse?”

It couldn't be- “Haylen?”

By the time he crossed through the cave-in to the main room, the figure was struggling to pull off their helmet, hampered by the X-01's massive mantle. Finally they succeeded and sure enough, it was the flustered face of the bravest, kindest scribe he'd ever known.

“Oh my god! I thought – I thought-” she moved towards him, nearly toppled over, and had the more sensible idea of exiting the power armour. No sooner was she out of it when she launched herself at him. With his arms pinned awkwardly to his sides, she couldn't even reach all the way around.

“Um,” he managed.

“I thought you were _dead!_ ” she spluttered at last, still hugging him fiercely and ineffectually. “Nate said he wouldn't and I believed him but as soon as he set off Maxson left the Prydwen on 'business' and I just knew he was going to follow him and-” Danse nudged her and she remembered to take a breath. “-I thought there was no way he'd be able to talk Maxson down and he'd either make Nate kill you or do it himself a-and... and...” She finally leaned back, staring at him as though she weren't quite sure if he was a hallucination or not.

He gave her a smile, though he felt it was as sad as it was happy. “It's good to see you, Haylen.”

That seemed to snap her from her disbelieving reverie; “”It – it's good to see you too. Really good. I'm sorry for staring, it's just – you're alive, he really talked him down. _Nate_ talked him down. How the hell did he pull that one off?”

“He...” He hesitated. Should he tell her? He wasn't sure he even believed it himself. But he knew what he'd seen on Nate's wrist, and Maxson had believed it well enough. After all her insistence that they were matched, she deserved to know. “He has my Name.”

“Your – you mean-” her eyes went very wide and round. “ _I knew it!_ And he, he showed it to Maxson?”

“I always said you had good instincts,” he offered weakly. Her delight was infectious, but the topic was still a solemn one. “He said that... if I died, Maxson would have to kill him too. If he hadn't shown the Name Maxson wouldn't have believed him, he would have attacked. But he just walked away, instead of calling Nate's bluff.”

She shook her head vigorously. “Not a bluff, sir. Matches live together and die together, that's how it works.” She stated it so matter-of-factly. If he thought about the sheer weight of the notion his head started to spin. Nate had said he'd rather die than kill Danse and he'd believed him, to an extent. But now he knew Nate had spoken those words fully aware of the Name on his wrist. He'd _meant_ it.

While Danse was having this minor earth shattering revelation, Haylen went on: “I know you shot the idea down before, but I never stopped believing, you know? Something about the way you two... anyway. When he came back to the Prydwen alive I thought there was no way he'd actually gone through with it. That if he was alive, maybe there was a chance that you were too.” Flush, breathless but happy, she gestured excitedly at the armour behind her. “That's why I brought the X-01!”

He left the overwhelming thoughts behind to glance at the hulking suit. “The power armour? I'm not sure I follow.”

“It's for you!” at which he almost did a double take, unsure he'd heard her correctly. “Rhys and I found it a month or so ago, full set, just left there. I mean, uh, it wasn't in the best shape when we found it, but he's been helping me fix it up. The legs are still a little sticky, but-”

“Wait, wait,” he _still_ wasn't sure he was hearing her correctly. X-01 was one of the rarest types of power armour, she couldn't mean... “You want to give this to me? I couldn't possibly – this would be better in the hands of the Brotherhood.”

“Then who would wear it? It's not T-60, so it would just end up collecting dust, or be dismantled for parts,” she toed the ground, “And if I got here and... and found that you'd been killed after all, I was just going to leave it. I wouldn't have been able to stand looking at it anymore or worse, watching someone else parade around in it. It was never intended for anyone but you.”

Ah, hell. His eyes were stinging. “Haylen...”

She smiled softly at him. “You're my Paladin. Nothing will change that.”

-

She promised to see him again, but realistically he knew it was unlikely. Perhaps once or twice more, but eventually she'd have to stop. Frequent disappearances raised too much suspicion, and if she were ever caught in his company she'd be branded a traitor too; she didn't have a high rank and Institute-shaped leverage to protect her as Nate did. He might never see her again, and so when she hugged him again he returned it, folding his arms around her awkwardly. Physical contact had never been his strong point, but he hoped his sentiment had come across.

Then she was gone, and he was alone again. But the suit stood in the middle of the room, unpainted and edged with rust, but still... proud, somehow. With held breath he twisted the valve at the back, listened to the hiss of hydraulics, watching it open up – like a lullaby and a pop-up book. He climbed in, found it already fitted to his size because of course, it was made for him. Haylen must have struggled to walk it all the way over here; it was hard enough to handle power armour without the proper training and acclimatisation techniques, but power armour that was two sizes too big for you? And yet she'd persevered.

The suit enclosed him and it was just... like some missing part of him had been restored. He was well aware that everyone, even most of the Brotherhood, thought he was a power armour fanatic and, well, maybe he was. Without that cage of metal around him, the weighty press on his limbs and smell of armour grease invading his nose, he never quite felt like himself. After every other part of him had been stripped away in the course of one day, he needed something familiar to anchor him.

He was still obsessed with power armour. He was still _Danse._

A metal suit wasn't enough to put all of his thoughts and fears to bed, but it eased his immediate nerves, and gave him some inkling of what he could do with himself from here. Protecting Nate, that was a good start. He unquestionably owed the man his life and more besides, that debt could never be repaid... but with this suit at his disposal, he could at least feel he was making a worthwhile attempt. He was aware this optimism wouldn't last forever, the glum reality of his life always gnawing at the edges of his mind, but at least he didn't feel completely helpless anymore. Leave it to Haylen to figure out exactly what he needed.

She'd persevered, for him. So had Nate. He'd return the favour.

-

The next time the elevator groaned with life, he knew it was Nate. If it wasn't, well, he was better equipped to defend himself now. But he was correct, of course, the all too familiar face stepping into the bunker, blinking rapidly at the new getup.

“Haylen came by,” Danse explained. “Dragged the suit all the way over here, just for me.”

“Remind me to slip that woman extra rations,” was the reply, though he soon fell into a stilted silence. “I spoke with Maxson. He wanted to determine if I was still loyal to the Brotherhood. I said that I was.”

“I see.” _I said_ and _I am_ were two different things. He thought of how Nate had been helping the Minutemen lately, and if maybe he'd already been slipping away before all of this occurred. He'd only seemed to focus on the Brotherhood again when he and Danse had made up.

“He reminded me that if I was seen in your company I'd be fired upon. I told him I'd try to disable our attackers instead of killing them.” _Our_. Such a small word, such a large meaning. “It wasn't the answer he wanted to hear, but... he knows how it is. And I got that promotion, despite not actually doing what he wanted.” Nate glanced up at this point, “Inherited all of your things... your power armour. You can have it back if you'd like, just needs some new paint.”

He considered it, but shook his head. “It's my old life. Wearing it again would just be a painful reminder.”

“Yeah,” Nate agreed quietly. “The new set looks good on you anyway. I mean, uh. You look battle-ready. Is what I meant.” He scratched the back of his neck, eyes cast away. “You do... you're still up for travelling together, right?”

“I would like to, yes. But there's some things we need to discuss first.” Daunting as the prospect was, they needed to talk. Danse felt as awkward as Nate looked, and it wasn't going to let up until they'd worked through everything.

“Right. Of course. It's late anyway, so we can stay here the night and set off tomorrow.” Nate hovered a minute or so more before finding a box to sit on. “Where do you want to start?”

He almost sat down on another box in the X-01 before remembering that wasn't the best of ideas. Besides, the power armour tended to make him look a bit unapproachable. He hit the release, stepped out as the suit opened up, and pulled a box over to sit opposite the fidgeting Nate. Best to get right to it. “Let me... can I see the Name?”

Nate wordlessly started work on one of the pip-boy's buckles; they were designed to stay put once strapped on, so the leather was stiff and cumbersome. Danse reached out to pre-emptively loosen the second strap, only to have Nate startle and look up at him.

Oh. Wrists were a personal place, now that he thought on it. “That was too forward?” he drew his fingers away again. “I'm sorry. I'm unfamiliar with Name etiquette.”

“It's fine, most people are these days,” was the mumbled reply. With some trepidation, he held out his wrist again. “But you can keep doing that, if you want. I mean. I don't mind.”

He slowly reached out again, resuming as Nate did the same. It wasn't an intimate act, he had to remind himself, but it felt like it somehow. The way the pip-boy slid off, and Danse curled his fingers under Nate's sleeve, rolling it back until the letters gleamed in the light. Not in his handwriting, but printed neatly: **M7-97**. Just looking at it made his head swim; the ultimate proof that the person sat opposite him was destined to remain by his side until they both perished. At the same time, it was also the ultimate proof that he had been born, term used loosely, a machine. How he wished it read _Danse_ instead.

“Danse,” Nate said softly, perhaps picking up on his turmoil. His fingers lingered near the sleeve of Danse's jumpsuit. “Can I see...?”

He nodded, tried not to shiver as the material was rolled back. Nate didn't look confused or surprised at the surname, so that meant that it wasn't incorrect? He had to ask. “The surname is – are you not Nathaniel Levine?”

“I – oh, right. I am _now_ ,” a smile pulled at his lips, as though he'd remembered something funny. “Clora is the surname I was born with. That'd be why you didn't know earlier, huh?”

He wasn't sure he followed, or what was so amusing. “You changed your surname?”

“I got married,” Nate said, still smiling, and the realisation hit Danse like a smack to the face. “My wife-to-be informed me that under no circumstances was she going to be called _Nora Clora_. So I took her last name instead.”

Well, he felt like an idiot. “I hadn't even considered...”

“Understandable, pre-war custom was to take the husband's surname and I take it's that's still usually the case. What we did would be considered odd, but it wasn't actually illegal.” He traced the _C_ on Danse's wrist. “If I'd stayed as Clora, you would have known I was your match immediately. You would have found out who you were immediately too.”

That might have been even worse than the way he actually found out. He would've have been executed before Nate could get a proper foothold in the Brotherhood, to their detriment. Perhaps Nate would have died with him, which would have been to the entire Commonwealth's detriment. “I suppose everything worked out as it was meant to. Though you told me sooner than you wanted?”

“Maybe that was fate as well, but... yes. I didn't want to overwhelm you. And I didn't want you to think I only saved you because you're my match.” 

“It is why, though.” No-one would honestly risk execution for a machine.

Nate sighed. “No – see, this is exactly what I was worried about. We're _friends_. We were long before this-” he tapped Danse's wrist, “-Came into play. Maybe it was the bond at work all along, but I've always felt closer to you than any of the others. That's not something I'm willing to lose, Name or no.”

“Maxson wouldn't have given you a choice.”

“I wouldn't have given him one,” Nate said firmly, and Danse shivered a little at the possible outcomes to that. “Anyway. I didn't save you just because of the Name. And I didn't... I didn't want you to feel pressured into anything because we're matched. I still don't,” he added quickly, “You need time to come to terms with everything. I don't expect anything from you.”

His mouth had gone dry. “You mean a relationship?”

Nate shuffled, uncomfortable. “It's not a mandatory part of being a match. I've known plenty who stayed friends.”

“But they can't have pursued a serious relationship with anyone else. Why would you?” No-one could understand you the way your match did. If you found your physical fulfilment in someone else fair enough, but it would never be anything more than casual sex, surely. “Would you want it that way? Seeing other people?”

More shuffling. “I'm happy with whatever you want to do.”

He really didn't have the patience for dancing around the subject. “I don't believe that. Give me an answer. Please.”

Nate huffed. “No, I don't want to see other people. I also don't need a relationship to survive, I've done okay on my own so far. So if you don't want to do anything, I'm fine with that – really.”

 _Fine with that._ Danse had been on his own for many years and couldn't remember ever actively trying to change that fact, so arguably he was fine with it too. But he'd be kidding himself to say he'd never yearned for a relationship, looked at his Name and daydreamed of the connection, emotional and physical. It was a very small minority that were honestly happy with being alone, and Danse didn't belong to it. He didn't think Nate did either.

They might both end up that way if one of them didn't just say something. Biting his lip, he took on the task: “What if I wanted more than friendship?”

Nate had gone wide-eyed. “Do you?”

“I – well-” he could feel himself losing his nerve, the words wheedling away, “I'm not saying one way or the other-” damn it, there it went, “-But if I did, theoretically, would you also want to?”

“Maybe? I-I'm not – I hadn't considered one way or the other.” Well, that was an informative answer. A part of him wanted to push more, but Nate's expression was starting to edge from uncomfortable to distressed. He was a machine, he wasn't supposed to feel empathy, but his insides twisted regardless.

“Let's just drop the subject,” he declared. Nate's shoulders slumped; not happy, but at least he wasn't going to make things any worse. “You're right, we both need time to process everything. We'll stay as we are for now, and talk about it later.”

“Yes,” Nate echoed hoarsely, and that was that.


	9. Chapter Nine (Nate)

Lying awake at insomnia o' clock, staring at the crumbling ceiling of the bunker, Nate thought: _So that was that._

Danse had his own bedroll, set a careful distance from Nate's. He'd brought spare blankets but found Haylen had already supplied Danse, which only reinforced his thought that she was actually some kind of reincarnated saint. He had no idea whose Name she had but Christ damn, he hoped they treated her like a queen.

So physically, Danse was provided for. Emotionally he had a long road ahead, but it was doable. Romantically, he was unfortunately matched with an absolute idiot. He'd tried to articulate himself in that conversation about Names, he really had, but facts were facts. And fact was, a dead cactus was better at expressing itself than Nate was.

It was just hard to tell Danse what he wanted without feeling as though he were pushing the man into something. Especially now, with Danse unsure of his own identity, he was particularly susceptible to any suggestions. Nate didn't want to say _I want this_ and have Danse agree, go along with it, when he actually didn't at all. Or worse, agreed because he felt indebted, or because Nate would abandon him if he didn't. If he and Danse... did anything... then Danse later came to regret it, Nate would never forgive himself. 

He therefore had to hold back on telling Danse that he did, in fact, want to do things.

He'd already been contemplating it before he'd found out his paladin was M7-97 and now that he knew, it had only increased tenfold. This was the person he was meant to spend the rest of his life with, to know on every level of intimacy. Matches didn't _have_ to be sexual. But he really fucking wanted it to be.

But maybe Danse didn't. Maybe he wasn't interested in that stuff. He'd never given any indication that he was and he seemed almost too... good? Noble? To partake in something so base. At the same time, would he really be matched with someone who wasn't interested in sex? He'd never heard of anyone who loved sex being matched with someone who hated it, but then that stuff was private, of course he wouldn't have heard of it. He _had_ known people who slept with others outside of their match, maybe because their partner didn't want to...

Not, he tacked on mentally, that he _loved_ sex. That he'd spent accumulative years on-duty without sharing anyone's bunk – despite a few offers – proved that he was really alright with just his hand. But he... he did want to. 

It was made more problematic by the fact that Danse was a guy, and he'd sort of kind of never been with a guy before. He'd even assumed, at first, that M7-97 would be female by default; despite occasionally checking out both sexes, he'd never considered himself _into men_. But then also not exactly _into women_ , just _into Nora_. Norasexual. Now currently Dansesexual.

Fuck, he could feel his heart rate picking up, thoughts getting jumbled. He needed some sort of distraction before he worked himself into a state.

“Danse,” he called out softly, “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” was the immediate reply because of course, he was about as bad at this sleeping thing as Nate was. They were really too similar. Nora had always been a perfect foil for him, outgoing and witty. Danse was more like a reflection.

“...Want a smoke?”

There was a contemplative pause. “I would. Haylen did not supply me with any cigarettes, though. I believe she wants me to quit.”

“Just as well I'm here to be a bad influence, then,” he said, and just about heard the low chuckle in response. It made him feel better, for sure. “You can share mine.”

He'd meant giving Danse one of his cigarettes, but when he opened the packet it turned out there was only one left. He scratched his neck sheepishly; politeness dictated he should give it to Danse, who definitely needed it more than he did, but at the same time he really did want a smoke. “We could split it? If you're okay with that.” Danse nodded, which was great, but they were still on separate bedrolls. With a frankly embarrassing amount of dithering he got up and went over to Danse's bedroll, so they were sat next to each other. “Is this alright?”

“It's fine,” Danse shuffled. “You know, you don't need to consider everything you do around me.”

“Sorry, I just-” he made a fair point. This walking on eggshells routine wasn't helping either of them, but... “I don't want to overstep any boundaries. I know it's just sitting next to each other, but I could end up becoming – too close. By degrees. When you don't want me to.”

Danse looked at though he were about to say something but he faltered, averted his eyes. “Maybe it's best to consider what we would have been comfortable doing before all this. When we were simply friends,” he said at last, the words slow and careful. “We would have been fine sitting next to each other, and sharing a cigarette. Right?”

“Right,” Nate agreed, if somewhat woodenly. He plucked the lone cig from its pack, briefly hesitated over who should get it first, but ended up sticking it in his own mouth. Fished out his lighter and lit up. He caught Danse staring at him in his peripheral which, he thought, was not something he would have done when they were _simply friends_ , but he wasn't going to raise the issue. After his first drag, he handed it over for Danse to take.

It was a bit easier to relax after that. Nicotine, but also the slow, rhythmic motions of passing it between them, that brief glimmer of orange from the cherry followed by a soft exhaling sound. Without the winds of the Prydwen's forecastle to whip it away the smoke clung and curled around them, snakelike. It was intimate, he thought. At least the sharing bit was, since his lips were touching something Danse's lips had just touched, and wasn't that at least a bit like kissing?

He wanted – he wanted to-

The haphazard pattern of his exhaled smoke told him he was breathing too hard. Danse glanced over at him, concerned: “Nate?”

Ridiculous. He couldn't work himself into a panic now when his company was going through so much worse. Danse needed to lean on him, not the other way around. “It's nothing, I'm fine.”

Danse hmmed, stubbed out the remnants of the cigarette, then turned and gave him one of Those Looks. Like flicking a light switch. “Nate,” he said quite evenly, “Tell me.”

It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself: “I want to kiss you.”

The Look faltered. “Oh.”

“Not – not just kiss, I mean – I mean-” fucking fuckity fuck fuck. There were so many things he could've said instead, why was he so stupid? “Be in a relationship. With kissing. Sometimes. But, but I'm fine if you don't want to, that's absolutely fine-”

“I want to,” Danse blurted out.

“I don't want to you to feel as though... as though...” he trailed off as his brain processed those three little words, just staring. “You do?” he asked, like a moron.

Danse swallowed. “If you want – ngh. Yes, I do.”

“Yes but – do you _actually_ want to be in a relationship? Or are you saying that because that's what I want? Because I'm really fine with friendship, I'm not going to leave you behind if you say no.”

“But you do want to kiss,” he pointed out.

“I – y-yes, but... in the future, when everything's settled down.”

“So not right now?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I-” he sighed shakily, ran a hand through his hair. “I don't want you to remember your first kiss with me as also the worst day of your life.”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose that does make sense.” Danse's fingers curled and uncurled on his lap. He looked up at the ceiling a few times, as though working up to saying something. “However, it is after midnight. So technically, it is no longer the worst day of my life.”

Nate blinked at him. “Are you saying I have free reign to kiss you now?”

“That is what I was insinuating, yes.”

“Well, uh. Alright then.” He was pretty sure Danse was telling him to hurry up and do something, even if it was in a roundabout way. He shuffled to the side so he faced the man, Danse doing the same, and they looked at each other with all the sexual charge of two traffic cones. “Let's. Let's try it now, then.”

He leaned in hesitantly, and Danse also leaned in hesitantly, and they sort of almost made their mouths meet before Danse kind of twitched and turned his face away sharply, shoulders shaking.

“What is it? Do you not-” he was alarmed, until he realising Danse was _smiling_. Laughing actually, the silent shaking bubbling into something audible. His skin tingled in response, chest bursting with something that could only be identified as happiness: “Are you laughing at me?”

“I'm laughing at _both_ of us,” Danse wiped at his eyes, his cheeks shiny and pleasantly pink-tinged, “This is – this is terrible. We're terrible.”

“I know.” He shuffled forward enough to pitch into one of Danse's shoulders, the way one might thunk their head against a wall or table. “I'm so sorry. I'm about as smooth as sandpaper.”

“It's alright,” Danse patted his arm. “I don't think I'm much better.”

He glanced up; despite consciously moving over, he hadn't considered how much closer he was to Danse now. But that was a good start, right? “Do you want to try again?”

Danse looked down at him, his eyes still wet and scrunched at the corners with mirth. “I suppose we'd better.”

They moved in again, Nate turning his head slightly so their noses wouldn't collide... unfortunately Danse did the same and they both ended up with their heads slightly tilted one way, then the other way as they tried to correct it, like two people struggling to move past each other. Nate made a frustrated sound; “Hold on, stop-” Danse's shoulders were shaking again. “-Will you _stop laughing?_ ” But he was doing it too, overcome with such a levity he felt he could've floated away.

“I'm sorry-” he gasped between a bout, “Hold on, let me come to you. Just – wait – keep your head still!” with a half-amused, half-exasperated sound, he placed his hands either side of Nate's face, quelling any unintentional head-tilting. He moved in for the kiss, but got another case of the tremors right before contact and had to duck his head away.

“You're the one who can't go through with it! Come here,” he slid his hands over Danse's raised arms and shoulders, around the back of his neck, pulled him in-

And then, abruptly, their mouths had met. It wasn't great at first, stilted and wooden and so ridiculous he ended up laughing into Danse's mouth, feeling him do the same in return. Then he tried to pull back, only their arms were locked around each other, which only made everything even worse. He had to pull back momentarily to gasp for air, left so light-headed from the hysteria that he couldn't even remember to stay upright. He slumped into another kiss, breathless and boneless, felt the tension and shaking of Danse's shoulders dissipate as he did the same.

 _Then_ they were kissing.

Chapped lips moved against his, slightest rasp of stubble on his chin, warm, warm hands pressed to either cheek. Scent of armour grease and linen and something earthy, like grass or dried leaves. He slid his hands up the back of Danse's neck to wind in the hair at his nape, so soft under his fingertips. Danse made a sound into his mouth and _oh_ that wasn't a laugh, it was a moan. Eager to hear it again he buried his fingers further into thick, dark hair, tugged ever so slightly and was rewarded with another delicious, addictive noise. 

It was Danse who finally broke the kiss, panting against his mouth; his cheeks were dark, eyes dazed and dilated. Nate was sure he looked much the same, though he was at least able to speak: “Better?”

That got him a little huffing half-laugh. “Yes. Better.” He fell quiet then, thumbing slowly along Nate's cheekbone, simply looking. It was intense, like most things about Danse, but Nate made sure to hold the gaze. “Can we do this again?”

“Like right now, or...?”

“In general, I meant.” He whetted his lips. “Right now is also an option.”

“Let's say yes to both,” Nate murmured, and leaned in again.

-

The rest of the night was much the same, slow kissing with his hands entwined in Danse's hair, and Danse's hands cautiously touching his face and neck. Nothing below the waist, or even chest, despite the languid ache between his legs; there was a lazy pleasure in letting it fizzle to a close as tiredness eventually overcame them both. He only dimly remembered dragging his sleeping bag over to lie next to Danse, their hands not quite touching.

When they left the next morning they left he fell into an easy step beside his former CO, feeling no different than before – aside from how much closer they walked next to each other.

The difference came when a vertibird roared overhead, targeting some nearby raiders further up the road. Nate swore, grabbed Danse and dragged him to the nearest cover before they were spotted and forced to defend themselves. Mind racing at full throttle as he planned out what to do if they were.

He glanced at his counterpart and found his expression shaken, but grim. That was at least better than resignation – he was willing to take up arms, even if it pained him to do so. Maybe, Nate thought, that was even worse than the prospect of his former family attacking him. That he'd have to counter-attack, that he'd probably win. It wasn't the fear of death, it was the fear of killing others.

When the vertibird finished off the raider pack and moved along, they both sighed in relief. Danse was quieter than normal for the next hour, and Nate didn't know what he could say to console him.

-

They settled in one of the Commonwealth's skyscraper shells, as far up as possible so they weren't in any sniper's sights, the 24-7 warfare of the urban jungle but a muffled theatre below them. Remembering walking down those same streets in the time Before could drive a man to despair if he thought on it too hard, so he turned his mind elsewhere. From here, the silhouette of the Prydwen could be seen suspended in the distance. Danse was cleaning his gun, but he kept looking up at it with an increasingly mournful expression. Nate found himself wishing they'd chanced sleeping in the subway instead.

“Hey,” he called out softly, and Danse didn't look over. That wasn't good. “I want to call in the IOU.”

“The what?” his voice was distant. Nate didn't elaborate, baiting with silence until Danse finally dragged his gaze away from the horizon. “What IOU?”

“The one about you holding me. Haylen got a hug when she was upset, I want one too.”

He looked confused; “Are you upset?”

“I'm... terrified of heights. Being up here is very distressing,” he held out his arms resolutely, “I might pass out without proper reassurance, sir.”

Danse just stared at him for a second, and he figured it was yet another failed persuasion attempt. But then he stepped away from the window, stepped out of the power armour, and stepped in front of Nate. He cleared his throat briskly, and moved to embrace him. The overall effect was like slotting two pieces of wood together. Nate hid his smile in Danse's shoulder.

“You know, when you rode a vertibird to the Prydwen for the first time I recall pointing out that you didn't seem afraid of heights,” Danse remarked nonchalantly.

“Concerns and fears change with time,” Nate answered as evenly as possible. He tried shifting to a more comfortable stance, sliding one hand up the middle of the broader man's back, feeling him relax into the touch. “It'll be okay, Danse.”

-

He had to report back to the Prydwen. He'd been visiting less and less lately; it wasn't that the people there were _bad_ , but they weren't Danse. He thought back to the first meeting at the police station, the offer after Arcjet... they'd seemed like his best chance at finding Shaun but really, it was the paladin's conviction that had sold him on the idea. Without him there was little incentive to go back, but he had a bunch of missions to turn in and he needed to show up every so often to prove he was still alive.

He intended to send Danse to Sanctuary, but the man shook his head. “I'll go back to the bunker.”

“I'd rather you didn't.” Despite populating the place with some happy memories, it didn't make Post Bravo less dingy and depressing. The idea of Danse sitting around there on his own with only his thoughts for company did not appeal. 

But he shook his head again. “If I'm seen in Sanctuary I could incense a Brotherhood attack. I don't want to put the settlers at risk.”

“They hardly go up near Sanctuary. Even if they did, it's one of my best-defended settlements.” It had never stopped being home, and so he'd fortified it appropriately. He was pretty sure the Minutemen Castle was less defensive than Sanctuary was. “Plus, it's less suspicious to other members of the Brotherhood if I keep going to Sanctuary than if I keep going to a strange bunker.”

“...I suppose I hadn't considered that.” He didn't quite sound convinced, but he was getting there. 

Nate swallowed. Emotional manipulation didn't suit him, but it wasn't so bad if it were true. “I would be much happier knowing you were there. Please?”

That got him a put-upon sigh. “Don't think I don't know what you're doing. But fine, I'll go.”

-

Every time he went to the Prydwen he had to pass by Maxson's office at the front of the ship. Every time he swore he could feel the elder's piercing stare tracking him, silently asking _Are you still one of us?_

If asked he would have simply nodded, because he was never good at speaking lies.

But even if he couldn't consider them friends, the last thing he wanted was to have them as enemies. For now all he could do was complete as many banal missions as the proctors had for him; fetch this, kill that, safeguard them. Be as helpful as possible so no-one could say anything bad, while he neatly put off any of the major directives Maxson had given him and investigated whether the Minutemen could handle them instead. Breaking away by increments.

When the day was done he retired to Danse's – to _his_ quarters on the Prydwen. Collapsed face-down on the bed and breathed deeply, the scent of its former occupant lingering. He'd slept in this bed before, that one time at Danse's insistence, after his first trip to the Institute... but the blankets had definitely been newly changed, plus he had to impression Danse had scrubbed the place clean top to bottom. This time the room had been left undisturbed, the sheets unlaundered, so it was as though Danse had rolled out of them that morning. Power armour, cigarettes, earth.

It was easy enough to slip into fantasy, recall the same aroma paired with lips that moved against his, fingers tracing his jaw like he were some precious thing. They'd shared a few repeat occurrences since then but far more fleeting; the wasteland didn't exactly lend itself to romance. Nothing so languid, intimate. Christ, he could feel himself stirring just thinking about it.

Almost before he knew what he was doing he'd snaked one hand under his stomach and between his legs, giving himself a squeeze. Should he...? This had been Danse's bed even if it wasn't any longer. Even if he and Danse were sort of together now. Were sort of destined for each other. That fact hadn't entirely sunk in yet, which was maybe why this felt so taboo.

He wriggled to free his arm again, laying it near his sideways-turned head so he could see the writing. It was difficult to marry the impersonal arrangement of letters and numbers on his wrist with the man he knew. That a laboratory could have produced such a tapestry of facets, flaws, nuances, contradictions. He'd seen how they were made, watched the process start to finish with equal parts fascination and horror. Watched brand new people walk out of that little circular pool of red life-giving liquid. 

Once, probably not ten years ago, Danse had walked out of that pool.

Though that didn't make him equate Danse with _automaton_ , but the automatons, as the Institute would have classified them, with Danse. Every time they churned out a new person, they had – or had the potential to have – an equally intricate personality and outlook. Danse was so... so _human_. And that meant every Gen-3 the Institute created was as well. The Institute aspired to be gods, but he'd overheard the hushed debates between scientists; most would balk if they found out they'd succeeded.

He blinked, realising how off-track his thoughts had wandered. Well, that was a leap from considering jacking off in his CO's bed... and his arousal was well and truly gone. 

He flopped onto his back, groaning aloud in exasperation. “Thanks, brain.”


End file.
